Economic Fraud
Banking Frauds? TRAI’s ‘160’ is Your Safety Net
In response to the increasing incidents of spam call fraud, the government has introduced a new number series specifically for transactional and service voice calls. According to a statement from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), all such calls originating from financial institutions will now begin with the prefix 160.
TRAI recently convened a meeting with representatives from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), and other financial entities, along with telecom service providers (TSPs), to discuss this new measure.
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The implementation of the 160 prefix will facilitate easier identification of legitimate callers, making it harder for fraudsters to deceive citizens. In the initial phase, this new number series will be used by all entities regulated by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). Eventually, the series will be extended to cover banks and other financial institutions, including both government and private banks, global banks, members of the Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI), as well as telecom service providers.
Additionally, the TRAI meeting addressed the transition of the current 140 series, which is presently used for promotional calls, to the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform, with a focus on digital consent scrubbing. It was also reported earlier this month that the new number series would follow the format 1600ABCXXX, with AB representing the telecom circle code (e.g., 11 for Delhi, 22 for Mumbai) and C indicating the telecom operator code.