2 min readNew DelhiMay 12, 2026 07:57 PM IST
In a push to curb cyber-enabled financial frauds, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) have signed an MoU to strengthen coordination across India’s banking and digital payments ecosystem.
The collaboration aims to enhance fraud-risk intelligence sharing, analytical support, and operational coordination, with a particular focus on identifying and eliminating mule accounts — a key enabler of cyber fraud.
Announcing the development, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that the initiative reflects the government’s commitment to building a “cyber secure Bharat”. In a post on X, Shah highlighted that mule accounts remain a major challenge in tackling cybercrime and noted that the partnership would leverage artificial intelligence to detect and dismantle such accounts swiftly.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the I4C will share intelligence related to suspected mule accounts through its Suspect Registry, which will be integrated into AI-driven fraud detection systems such as MuleHunter.ai™ deployed across banks. The RBIH will use these datasets to train and enhance fraud-risk assessment models, enabling more proactive detection and prevention of suspicious transactions.
Officials said the integration of real-time intelligence with AI tools is expected to significantly improve early warning systems and reduce financial fraud losses. The move also aims to strengthen trust in India’s rapidly expanding digital payments ecosystem.
The I4C has been at the forefront of India’s cybercrime response architecture, operating platforms such as the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) and maintaining databases like the Suspect Registry. Meanwhile, RBIH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, has been driving innovation in financial technologies, particularly in AI-based fraud detection systems.
