India’s digital revolution, once hailed as the cornerstone of a new economic era, is facing a serious and escalating crisis—one that threatens to undo the trust and progress gained over the last decade. In 2024, Indians lost a staggering Rs 22,842 crore to cybercriminals and digital fraudsters, a figure that not only dwarfs previous years but also highlights how vulnerable our digital economy has become. This number, released by the Delhi-based media and tech firm DataLEADS, is nearly three times higher than the Rs 7,465 crore lost in 2023 and nearly ten times the Rs 2,306 crore in 2022. Alarming as these figures are, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) predicts that the number could cross Rs 1.2 lakh crore by the end of 2025. The number of cybercrime complaints filed is rising just as fast—nearly 20 lakh in 2024 alone, up from 15.6 lakh in the previous year and a tenfold increase since 2019. These numbers expose a grim truth: as India embraces digitisation at an unprecedented scale, cybercriminals are becoming faster, sharper, and more organised. The ease with which scams unfold—and the growing sophistication with which they’re executed—points to a systemic issue that extends beyond individual carelessness. The roots of this crisis lie in our very success: the proliferation of smartphones, cheap internet, and digital payment platforms that have made financial transactions seamless for millions. What was once an inclusion success story—of reaching remote corners with digital banking and UPI— has now morphed into fertile ground for fraud. From phishing links and deepfake videos to fake insurance apps and investment scams, the digital underworld has weaponised technology in ways few were prepared for.
One major reason for this surge in online financial crime is the rapid mainstreaming of digital payments, especially UPI-based platforms like PhonePe, Paytm, and Google Pay. These services have seen meteoric growth, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, which led the government to push for contactless payment options to limit virus transmission. This, combined with India’s already massive smartphone user base and cheap mobile data rates, led to a surge in digital transactions—from just Rs 162 crore in 2013 to Rs 18,120.82 crore in January 2025. In June alone, over 190 lakh UPI transactions worth Rs 24.03 lakh crore were recorded. India now accounts for nearly half the world’s digital payments, a feat unmatched globally. But the security mechanisms meant to accompany this digital leap were either weak or absent, leaving users exposed to increasingly sophisticated fraud. Bank-related cybercrimes have seen an explosive rise; the RBI reported an eightfold jump in the first half of FY 2025–26, with private banks accounting for the majority of incidents but public-sector bank customers losing more money—nearly Rs 25,667 crore. Insurance scams, too, are proliferating, with fraudsters using credible brand names and logos to trick unsuspecting policyholders into buying fake health, motor, or life insurance plans. These scams are often initiated over WhatsApp, Telegram, or SMS, making them hard to trace and easy to scale. Phishing messages offering fake refunds from popular e-commerce sites, fraudulent links seeking UPI or card credentials, and fake product listings on shady websites are now common occurrences. The tragedy is that many of the victims are neither naïve nor uneducated. Highly literate individuals are also falling prey to scams that use AI-generated videos of celebrities and public figures endorsing fake schemes, a trend that marks the dangerous intersection of technology and deceit. Even more troubling is that the platforms enabling such fraud—messaging apps and social media networks—have largely evaded accountability by claiming they are ‘intermediaries’ and not responsible for user-generated content. Despite government efforts to pass laws that demand greater responsibility from these companies, enforcement remains patchy at best.
What is now required is not just a reactive approach but a complete overhaul of how we think about digital safety and regulation. We cannot let platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and YouTube continue to function without robust oversight, especially when tens of thousands of finance-related complaints are being filed against them each month. There needs to be a strong legal and technological framework that compels them to cooperate with Indian law enforcement and invest in proactive fraud detection. Equally, the banking and insurance sectors must modernise their cybersecurity protocols and launch aggressive awareness campaigns to help customers identify potential scams. Regulatory bodies must adopt AI and machine learning not just to detect fraud after it occurs, but to prevent it in real-time. Public awareness is crucial— especially in small towns and rural areas where digital literacy still lags behind digital access. The government must also set up a faster, transparent grievance redressal system to ensure that victims of cyber fraud are not left helpless, watching their life savings vanish without recourse. As India aspires to lead the world in digital transactions, it must also lead in digital safety. The current state of affairs, where a retired schoolteacher or a college student can be robbed blind through a single malicious message, is untenable. The dream of Digital India cannot be allowed to collapse under the weight of such insecurity. If the same energy and innovation that built this digital ecosystem is now channelled into securing it, we can still win this battle. But for that, both the state and the private sector must recognise the scale of the threat—not as a niche law enforcement issue, but as a national economic and social emergency.