Digital businesses question whether mobile number validation by itself would be an adequate solution to digital fraud. This point was highlighted during MediaNama’s discussion on the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) Mobile Number Validation (MNV) Rules on July 31.
“ If I know which phone number belongs to which person, will that eradicate all the fraud which are happening? And are we saying that wherever there is a mobile number, there is a propensity to have fraudulent activity? Are we even assessing that the ecosystem which we are trying to target, is it the entire ecosystem we are saying is not functioning, that it needs this kind of identification, validation to say so?” Seema Jindal, Head of Public Affairs at Truecaller, emphasised during the discussion.
Jindal’s comment comes in the context of the draft amendment to the telecom cybersecurity rules, 2024, that the DoT released in June this year. This draft amendment seeks to bring in a new category of service providers within the scope of the rules. Called Telecom Identifier User Entities (TIUEs), these are entities that use telecom identifiers to validate their users or deliver their services. TIUEs have to comply with a range of obligations, such as following orders to suspend the use of certain telecom identifiers, and providing DoT with data related to the telecom identifiers. They also have to validate users through the MNV platform based on Government directions.
How many times should a customer go through verification?
“So once the customer is validated, the question is should we do it again and again? There is IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India), there is SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), there is Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there is one bank giving a loan, the other bank giving a credit card. So already this discussion is on for KYC. So how do we manage this? This is certainly going to create a big irritant when it comes to dealing with customers,” Rajiv Kumar Gupta, President of PB Fintech, mentioned.
He argued that this mobile number validation process could effectively become another one of the KYC processes that the company follows when onboarding customers. When asked if this could replace the current KYC processes, he mentioned that the company will “ not look at replacing this [the current system]. It has to go through our systems, plus the external systems”.
TIUE customers have already gone through one round of KYC verification when they obtained their SIM cards from telecom companies, raising questions about whether there is a need for a second round of validation, especially based on the same database. Responding to this line of reasoning, VP Public Policy for Vodafone Idea (Vi), Jasroop Sandhu, mentioned that an additional round of validation is necessary because the first round of information is only available with telecom operators.
“There are frauds that are…
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