PhonePe’s guardrails: Foundations of trust and safety

As India embraces the convenience and efficiency of digital payments, trust and safety are essential to fueling its growth. Towards this, PhonePe leverages best-in-class technology and innovative practices, uniquely designed in India to deliver uncompromising security while respecting your privacy.

Let us explore the foundational pillars of PhonePe’s security approach—from robust identity verification to advanced fraud detection systems. This layered protection strategy forms the backbone of a secure payments experience, ensuring your data and hard-earned money stay safe every step of the way.

Identity verification: Secure from the start

PhonePe ensures that users are who they claim to be, and this is done through a combination of KYC (Know Your Customer) processes, biometric verification, and secure document authentication.

• Two-factor authentication (2FA): PhonePe combines what you know (password), what you have (smartphone), and who you are (biometrics) to create a robust security layer.
• Behavioral biometrics: Detecting patterns in user behavior, like device type and phone characteristics, helps flag suspicious activity early.
• Document verification: Through secure KYC processes, we verify official documents like Aadhaar and PAN cards, ensuring authenticity from the start.

Intelligence-driven fraud detection

PhonePe’s approach towards security is to be proactive in the patterns analysis and look at building intelligence signals across a user journey that can be used to identify anomalous patterns.

• Fraud evaluation engine: The decision engine constantly monitors transactions, blocking high-risk ones and alerting users of any anomalies.
• Customer support and risk investigations: A dedicated support team is ready to address any fraud reports and assist in the investigation process, working closely with partners and authorities to resolve issues swiftly.

Proactive and reactive interventions

Even with strong identity verification and intelligent data-driven insights, intervention is crucial. Once a potential threat is identified, quick and precise action must be taken. At PhonePe, we make several interventions including:

• Preventive measures: When unusual activity is detected, we proactively end all sessions or freeze the account until the user re-authenticates, preventing further risk.
• Hurdles and decline events: We introduce informative hurdles for unfamiliar transactions and actively block payments that pose a clear risk, driven by compliance, business, or fraud rules.
• Fraud reporting and cybercrime assistance: PhonePe’s dispute redressal system guides users on how to report fraud and take action, including coordinating with banks, merchants, and law enforcement when needed.
• Takedown efforts: We closely monitor and remove malicious websites, apps, and accounts to protect users from fraud.

Enhanced account and transaction safety

To keep the platform safe and secure, PhonePe validates the legitimacy of all accounts and transactions resulting from an account during various stages of the accounts’ lifecycle.

Two-step validation: We use OTPs and a two-step re-authentication to verify logins from new devices, accounts, or changes in phone numbers, as well as for UPI transactions.

Machine learning: Our rule engine continuously learns from emerging fraud patterns to keep transactions secure in real time.

Our goal is simple: to empower you with a seamless, secure, and transparent payments experience. At PhonePe, trust and safety are not just priorities; they are our promise to you.

Next time, we will dive into some specialized features PhonePe has developed to address emerging security challenges for consumers. These features are evidence that Made-in-India technology can provide cutting-edge safety and security to millions of users every day, reinforcing trust in India’s broader digital payments ecosystem.

This is the first article in a four-part series on PhonePe’s commitment to securing digital payments for Indian citizens.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)