Google is strengthening AI fraud protection in India, but gaps remain

Google is bringing more AI power to India’s fight against digital fraud, as it rolls out on-device fraud detection for Pixel 9 devices and new screen sharing alerts for financial apps.

Digital fraud continues to rise in India as more people go online for the first time and increasingly rely on smartphones for payments, shopping and accessing government services. Frauds involving digital transactions accounted for more than half of all banking frauds reported in 2024 — 13,516 cases resulting in losses of 5.2 billion Indian rupees (about $58.61 million), according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The Interior Ministry said online scams caused losses estimated at 70 billion rupees (about $789 million) in the first five months of 2025. Many incidents likely go unreported, either because victims are unsure how to file a complaint or want to avoid further scrutiny.

Google on Thursday announced an expansion of its real-time fraud detection feature, which uses the Gemini Nano to analyze calls on the device and flag potential fraud without recording audio or sending data to Google servers. The feature is turned off by default and only applies to calls from unknown numbers, and it beeps during the conversation to notify participants. It first rolled out in the US in March as a beta for English-speaking Pixel 9 users.

Google has confirmed to TechCrunch that its on-device fraud detection will initially only work on the Pixel 9 and later models in India and will be limited to English-speaking users, with its warning also being in English only. This limits its reach in a market where Android accounts for roughly 96% of smartphones, according to StatCounter, but Pixel devices accounted for less than 1% share in 2024. The language limitations are also notable in a country where most users rely primarily on languages ​​other than English — an audience that Google and others like Amazon have acknowledged by adding support for Indian languages ​​across their services in recent years.

The tech giant said it is working to detect scams for non-Pixel Android phones as well, without offering a timeline.

Google also announced a pilot program in India with financial apps Navi, Paytm and Google Pay aimed at curbing screen sharing scams, where scammers convince victims to share their screens to obtain one-time passwords, PINs and other credentials during a call. The feature was first announced at Google I/O in May and was initially tested in the UK

Users with devices running Android 11 or later will have access to alerts, which include a one-tap option to end the call and stop screen sharing. Google confirmed to TechCrunch that it plans to add more app partners and the feature will display alerts in Indian languages ​​as well, but did not provide details.

For months, Google has also been using its Play Protect service to restrict predatory loan apps in India by blocking side-loading of third-party apps that request sensitive permissions that are often exploited for fraud. The company said the service blocked more than 115 million installation attempts this year. Meanwhile, Google Pay displays more than a million warnings each week for transactions flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to the company.

Google also runs the DigiKavach digital fraud awareness campaign, which it said has reached more than 250 million people. The company worked with the Reserve Bank of India to publish a public list of approved digital lending apps and associated non-banking financial companies to help curb malicious actors.

Earlier this year, Google launched a Safety Charter in India to expand its efforts in fraud detection and AI-based security, part of a broader plan to deploy more AI tools in the country to tackle rising fraud.

However, Google still faces major gaps in curbing digital fraud in India. The company – like Apple – has been questioned for allowing fake and misleading apps to appear in its App Store despite review processes aimed at preventing fraudulent submissions.

In recent years, police and security researchers have flagged investment and loan apps used in scams that remained available on the Play Store until the intervention. These cases highlight the challenges Google faces in monitoring the ecosystem that dominates the country’s smartphone market.