The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday decided to launch a dedicated Internet domain ‘bank.in’ for Indian banks and ‘fin.in’ for non-bank financial institutions to curb cyber security threats.
RBI announce new Bank Domain: RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra has announced the launch of a special ‘.bank.in’ Internet domain for Indian banks to curb financial fraud. The Reserve Bank is going to implement the special Internet domain Bank.in for Indian banks. This initiative will be effective from April 2025. The move is aimed at helping customers distinguish between legitimate banking websites and fraudulent websites.
What is bank.in domain?
RBI Governor said, “Reserve Bank will implement ‘bank.in’ special internet domain for Indian banks. Registration of this domain name will start from April this year. This will help in avoiding banking fraud. After this, ‘fin.in’ domain will be adopted for the financial sector.”
When will the new domain start?
The registration process for the ‘bank.in’ domain will start from April 2025. After this, RBI will introduce the ‘fin.in’ domain for the financial sector and non-banking financial institutions (NBFCs).
Why was bank.in domain introduced?
The RBI governor said that this step has been taken to prevent increasing cases of fraud in digital payments. This will increase the trust of customers in digital banking and payment services. He said that the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) will act as the exclusive registrar for this new domain.
New security system for international digital payments
RBI has also decided to implement Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) to increase security in international online transactions (Card Not Present Transactions). Till now AFA safety feature was mandatory only for digital transactions done within India. Now it will be implemented in international online payments as well.
