RBI unveils MuleHunter to prevent digital frauds 

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) based model namely MuleHunter.AITM to prevent and mitigate digital frauds through the use of mule accounts. Developed by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), Bengaluru, this public infrastructure facility will help the banks to deal with the issue of mule bank accounts expeditiously and reduce digital frauds, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said. 

Elaborating Deputy Governor Rabi Shankar said, “ “The MuleHunter is basically an infrastructure level setup which will use the databases from all banks, all other payment system operators. Its AI engine will be trained to be able to identify frauds much more effectively in the financial system.” 

“If you look at frauds, the number of frauds are increasing, the amount involved in frauds are increasing although the number of frauds per transaction is coming down over the years. But the number is enough for us to be concerned about it,” he said.  

He said banks and card systems and other entities are free to use their own fraud detection systems but they can make use of MuleHunter additionally. 

“Reserve Bank’s idea of introducing this, MuleHunter is to create an infrastructure level facility which others can use with many, many participants. Many small banks who do not have enough resources to develop systems can actually use this,” Mr. Shankar said.