The DoT, through a draft notification published on June 24, 2025, has proposed the establishment of a Mobile Number Verification (MNV) platform that will help authorised entities validate phone numbers used in customer identification and digital transactions. The platform aims to address the rampant use of mobile numbers in fraudulent activities, especially within the digital payments and banking ecosystem.
Entities such as banks, fintech platforms, and telecom operators—which rely on mobile numbers for customer authentication in services like UPI transactions—will be able to access this platform to check the legitimacy of a mobile number. The MNV system will verify whether a mobile number exists in the database of a telecom licensee or authorised entity, allowing real-time validation before transactions are processed.
The platform is designed to prevent impersonation and account takeovers by flagging or denying transactions linked to suspicious or fraudulent mobile numbers.
Introducing “TIUE” and Tiered Pricing for Verification Requests
Under the new framework, organisations that use mobile numbers for customer identification or transaction authentication will be classified as Telecommunication Identifier User Entities (TIUEs). This includes banks, digital payment apps, insurance companies, and any non-telecom platform relying on mobile numbers as a form of identity.
The draft rules also propose a tiered pricing model for mobile number validation:
- ₹1.5 per request for authorised government entities or licensees
- ₹3 per request for all other entities
This pricing aims to regulate and incentivize responsible access to user identity data, while ensuring that telecom resources are not misused or accessed arbitrarily.
DoT has invited public and industry feedback within 30 days of the draft’s publication, making stakeholder consultation a key component of the rule-making process.
More Powers to Law Enforcement and Fraud Detection Measures
The proposed amendments significantly enhance the role of government-authorised agencies and law enforcement bodies. These entities will now be allowed to collect transactional data linked to mobile numbers not just from telecom companies but also from non-telecom platforms like financial institutions and digital service providers.
Sources indicate that a leading bank has already begun piloting the MNV platform, using it to flag mobile numbers repeatedly involved in fraudulent activity. Once flagged, such numbers will be deactivated for 90 days. Crucially, to ensure that future users of reassigned numbers are not penalised, the number’s fraud history will be auto-deleted after the 90-day lockout period.
This marks a significant shift in how digital identity fraud is tackled in India—by not only tracking the behavior of mobile numbers across services, but also by holding platforms accountable for real-time validation and fraud reporting.
With digital payments becoming central to India’s financial infrastructure, the DoT’s move is a proactive step to plug identity and transaction loopholes before they are exploited at scale.