RBI Digital Payment Guidelines and How AppTrana Helps You Meet Them

Banking and Financial Services (BFS) firms are facing an unprecedented surge in cyberattacks. According to the Indusface State of Application Security 2025 study, BFS sites and APIs faced 1.2 billion attacks, with vulnerability exploits rising 74% from Q1 to Q4. Bot attacks occurred twice as often as in other industries, and BFS firms registered the second-highest custom rule blocks, only behind healthcare.

To strengthen defenses, the Reserve Bank of India’s Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls (RBI/2020-21/74) sets clear guidelines for payment gateways, wallets, mobile apps, internet banking, and card transactions.

AppTrana WAAP (Web Application and API Protection) helps BFS organizations comply with these RBI security controls while enhancing their overall security posture.

RBI’s Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls

The Reserve Bank of India’s Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls (RBI/2020-21/74) focuses on strengthening governance, risk management, and internal security controls across financial institutions. It aims to create a safer digital payment environment amid the rapid growth of online transactions.

Clause 8.b Risk Assessment by Regulated Entities (REs):

RBI Requirement: REs must proactively identify known vulnerabilities across all digital product touchpoints, including web apps, APIs, mobile apps, and third-party integrations, and take timely remedial action.

Why It Matters: Attackers scan financial systems daily for known CVEs and configuration errors. Even a minor vulnerability in an API or web form can expose sensitive payment data or create a pivot into core systems.

How AppTrana WAAP Helps:

• Attack Surface Monitoring: Continuously identify and inventory all internet-facing apps and APIs, including shadow or forgotten assets with built-in ASM tool.
• Continuous Vulnerability Scanning: Detect known vulnerabilities in web applications and APIs through the bundled DAST scanner.
• Fraud and Anomaly Detection: Track user behavior 24/7 with SOC monitoring to stop anomalies and fraud attempts.
• Manual Penetration Testing: Validate findings and uncover hidden business logic vulnerabilitieswith certified security experts.
• Threat Intelligence Integration: Apply updated signatures and real-time intelligence feeds to stop new exploits.
• Risk-Based Prioritization: Rank vulnerabilities by severity to guide faster remediation.
• SwyftComply: Apply virtual patches instantly to reduce exposure, maintain zero-vulnerability reports, and support compliance.

Clause 15. Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDoS Mitigation

RBI Requirement: REs must deploy WAFand DDoS protection  to protect digital payment products and services delivered over the Internet.

Why It Matters: Attackers now leverage AI and cloud infrastructure to dynamically adapt DDoS and botnet attacks. Unprotected payment applications are vulnerable to malicious payloads, while volumetric or application-layer DDoS attacks can take down online services, causing financial and reputational damage.

How AppTrana Helps:

• AI-Powered WAAP: AppTrana WAAP includes a fully managed Web Application Firewall, protecting against OWASP Top 10, CVE, and zero-day threats with custom rules.
• Behavioral DDoS Defense: Provides multi-layered protection against volumetric and application-layer DDoS attacks to maintain availability and performance. Using adaptive machine learning and behavioral analysis, it learns each app’s traffic patterns, detects anomalies like spikes or low-and-slow attacks, and blocks even AI-driven threats, ensuring availability without disrupting legitimate users.
• Origin Protection: AppTrana hides and secures your application origin servers by allowing only filtered traffic from WAAP. This prevents attackers from bypassing the WAF and directly targeting the origin, ensuring only legitimate, inspected requests reach your backend.
• 24×7 Managed Security: Expert teams monitor, tune, and respond to threats in real time, reducing operational overhead for BFS firms.

Clauses 24–28: Security Testing, Code Review & Continuous Vulnerability Management

RBI Requirement:

• Clause 24: REs must conduct VA (every 6 months), PT (at least annually), and secure code reviews. Post-change testing is mandatory after new deployments or major infra changes. Third-party applications must be certified as free from vulnerabilities and malware.
• Clause 25: Continuous or frequent vulnerability scanning of all critical, public-facing, and sensitive-data systems.
• Clause 26: Verification that previously discovered vulnerabilities have been remediated with no recurrence.
• Clause 27: Authenticated vulnerability scanning using local agents or administrative access.
• Clause 28: Functional and security testing of payment products and services before production rollout.

Why It Matters: Missed vulnerabilities, insecure code, and untested changes create open doors for attackers. Automated scans alone cannot detect logic vulnerabilities or hidden risks. RBI stresses a hybrid approach such as regular VA/PT, authenticated scans, and pre-deployment testing to ensure vulnerabilities are identified, verified, and remediated before they can be exploited.

How AppTrana Helps:

• Hybrid VAPT Coverage: Delivers AI-driven DAST combined with expert-led manual testing to meet RBI’s VA/PT mandates and uncover known, unknown, and business logic vulnerabilities across apps, APIs, and third-party integrations.
• Zero False Positives: Filters out noise using proprietary AI and heuristic techniques, with expert validation ensuring only actionable risks are reported.
• OWASP-Aligned Testing: Covers OWASP Top 10, API abuse, session hijacking, and advanced business logic vulnerabilities.
• Continuous & Authenticated Scanning: Runs automated DAST scans continuously and supports authenticated scans with credentials or tokens for deeper coverage and configuration checks.
• Post-Change & Pre-Production Testing: Validates patches and new deployments before going live through on-demand scans, ensuring vulnerabilities do not reappear.
• SwyftComply: Mitigates vulnerabilities immediately through AI-driven autonomous patching, while fixes are tracked, retested, and verified in a time-bound manner.

Clause 31.  Data Security Standards for Payment Applications

RBI Requirement: Payment apps and APIs must securely handle, store, and transmit data, following OWASP MASVS/ASVS, ISO 12812, and NIST guidelines. Testing must cover OWASP Top 10 and platform-specific risks.

Why It Matters: Following standards like OWASP Top 10, ISO 12812, and NIST ensures payment apps and APIs handle data securely, reduce vulnerabilities, prevent attacks, and maintain regulatory compliance.

How AppTrana Helps:

• Continuous Vulnerability Scanning: Identifies OWASP Top 10 and platform-specific risks in apps and APIs, enabling early detection to prevent data breaches and maintain compliance.
• End-to-End TLS: Secures sensitive payment and customer data in transit by enforcing TLS, removing the risk of eavesdropping or manipulation.
• Advanced Anomaly Detection: Flags unusual activity such as unauthorized bulk data transfers.
• Machine Learning-Based Behavior Analysis: Detects suspicious patterns like sudden access surges or repeated failed logins.
• Prevention of Data Exfiltration: Blocks attempts to extract sensitive data or conduct large-scale scraping.
• Enhanced Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Integrates multiple layers of defense to comprehensively safeguard sensitive information.

Clause 51.  Protecting Payment Apps Against Automated Attacks

RBI Requirement: RBI mandates that REs protect internet banking and payment apps from brute force bot-driven DoS attacks, and automated exploitation. Based on risk assessments, REs must adopt layered defenses such as adaptive authentication, CAPTCHA with anti-bot validation, and strong session controls. Additional safeguards like DNS poisoning protection, secure cookie handling, and virtual keyboards for sensitive inputs are also required.

Why It Matters: Automated attacks can compromise customer trust and lead to financial losses. Implementing robust protections ensures data integrity, service availability, and regulatory compliance.

How AppTrana Helps:

• Behavior-Based DDoS Protection: AppTrana monitors all incoming requests in real time, comparing them against historical traffic patterns. Anomalies like sudden spikes or unusual IP activity trigger automatic mitigation, ensuring always-on protection within minutes.
• AI-Powered Bot Detection: AppTrana analyzes behavioral and identity signals to dynamically score and identify bots. Advanced or evasive bots are detected, and automated actions such as rate-limiting or blocking are applied while minimizing false positives.
• AI-Based Threat Detection: AppTrana’s AI identifies malicious behavior and zero-day attacks even without predefined WAF rules, enabling proactive mitigation against emerging threats
• Intelligent CAPTCHA Mitigation: CAPTCHA is applied selectively based on bot scores and context. Layered challenges such as crypto, CAPTCHA, and blocking, reduce false positives while protecting sensitive pages and maintaining user experience.
• Protecting Against DNS Cache Poisoning: DNSSEC verifies DNS records to prevent cache poisoning and spoofing. AppTrana WAAP adds real-time analysis and mitigation, protecting against DNS cache poisoning and DNS-based DDoS attacks.

Meet RBI Guidelines with AppTrana WAAP

RBI’s digital payment security guidelines set a high bar for protecting financial applications, APIs, and customer data. AppTrana WAAP helps regulated entities meet these mandates with continuous threat detection, AI-powered bot and DDoS protection, intelligent CAPTCHA mitigation, DNSSEC enforcement, and real-time vulnerability management. Combined with SwyftComply, it ensures compliance and protects digital payments from evolving cyber threats.

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