A big problem in online security is verifying that the site you are accessing is the authentic version. As techies we have a bunch of ways to check if the site is valid but for regular users it can be a hard problem to solve. I personally know a few folks who have been scammed out of a lot of money so it is a pretty prevalent problem in the industry.<\/p>\n
One of the ways people get scammed is that they are sent a link to a site that looks like the official bank site but is instead a cloned version of the site that hijacks the entered password and OTP to steal money. To combat this issue and the problem of banking sites not having a verifiable URL \/ Domain name, the Government of India has announced the launch an exclusive \u201c.bank.in\u201d domain for banks starting from April 2025. <\/p>\n
Similar to how the .gov address is a known domain name for US Government and .gov.in for official Indian Government sites this new domain will be for verified\/validated banks only. The Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) will be the exclusive registrar for the new domain and will start rolling out in April. <\/p>\n
In addition, the RBI is also planning to launch a “.fin.in” domain for non-bank entities in the financial sector. This will cover entities like paypal\/PhonePe and other Fintech firms in India. <\/p>\n
I think that this is a great idea and it would be awesome if we have have a global official .bank domain. But something like that would take a lot of time and coordination to implement so for now we will just have the India specific domains. <\/p>\n