New Delhi, July 3 -- All banks have been advised to prevent cyber frauds by employing the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) real-time, risk-based metric - Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI) - which would help them in declining suspicious transactions, issuing alerts or warnings to customers, and delaying transactions flagged as high risk, a finance ministry official said. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already issued an advisory last month to this effect, directing all scheduled commercial banks, payments banks and co-operative banks to integrate FRI developed by DoT into their systems, the official, who did not wish to be named, said. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the ministry of communications welcomed RBI's directive. "This is a watershed moment in the fight against cyber-enabled financial frauds and a testament to the power of inter-agency collaboration in safeguarding citizens in India's growing digital economy," it said. The DoT is an arm of the ministry. The system automates data exchange between banks and DoT's digital intelligence platform DIP through API-based integration, enabling real-time responsiveness and continuous feedback to further refine the fraud risk models, it said. "The system's utility has already been demonstrated with leading institutions such as PhonePe, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Paytm, and India Post Payments Bank actively using the platform," the statement said. With UPI being the most preferred payment method across India, this intervention could save millions of citizens from falling prey to cyber fraud, it said. FRI, launched in May 2025 by the Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) of DoT, is a risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number to have been associated with medium, high, or very high risk of financial fraud....