The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has observed that a large number of spam complaints are made by the customers against the business entities from whom the consumers have earlier purchased goods or services. On investigation, such business entities often claim that they possess the consent of the consumer for receiving commercial calls and messages.
To address the issue, the regulations provide for acquiring consent digitally by the entities and registering them in a secure and interoperable digital consent registry maintained by the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for easy verification of consents while commercial communication is made to the consumers. However, for successful operation of this consent registration framework, onboarding of entities sending commercial communications is a necessary requirement.
Accordingly, to begin the national roll-out, TRAI has launched a Pilot Project in coordination with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) involving select banks and has issued a Direction on 13th June, 2025, to all the Telecom Service Providers, mandating them to pilot this framework in collaboration with banks. Given the sensitivity of banking transactions and cases of financial frauds through spam calls, the banking sector has been prioritized for the first phase of implementation. This Pilot, running under a Regulatory Sandbox framework, will validate the operational, technical, and regulatory aspects of the enhanced Consent Registration Function (CRF) and lay the foundation for sector-wise scaling of the digital consent ecosystem.
