Cyber fraud cases jumped four-fold in FY24, caused India $20 mn loss

High value cyber fraud cases in India jumped more than four times in FY24 causing losses of $20 million, official data showed, underscoring rising risks in a country with hundreds of millions of digital financial transactions everyday.

Affordable data packs in the world's most populous country, starting as low as 11 rupees per hour, have increased internet access and created a $1 trillion mobile payments market for firms such as Paytm, Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe.

But cyber literacy has lagged, leaving people vulnerable to fraud, with scammers impersonating officials or using AI to dupe unsuspecting people online, or through text messaging and mobile phone calls.

Data submitted by the Finance Ministry to parliament on Monday showed that people lost a combined 1.77 billion rupees to fraud in the fiscal year ended March 2024, more than double the amount of fiscal 2023.

The total number of cases where the amount involved was 1,00,000 rupees or more, jumped to 29,082 from 6,699 the year before, it showed.

“With increasing digital payment transactions in the country, incidences of fraudulent practices including digital payment frauds have also gone up in the last few years,” the ministry said in reply to a question in parliament.

Increasing incidents of cybercrime have triggered action from authorities such as the telecom regulator, which ordered blacklisting spam callers, and the central bank, which has proposed allowing banks to freeze accounts suspected of being used to commit fraud.

The ministry said the Centre launched media awareness campaigns, asking people to be vigilant.