Zerodha trade alerts exchange SMS investor protection unauthorised trading DND

Zerodha trade SMS and email alerts from the exchanges

From WebNotes, a public knowledge base. Last updated 20 June 2026. Reading time ~12 min.

Key facts

Who sends the SMS and email	The exchanges, NSE, BSE and MCX, not Zerodha; they use the contact details your broker reported at account opening
When you get them	On every day you trade, sent by the exchange after market hours; the depository sends a separate SMS on any demat debit
Why they exist	A SEBI investor-protection measure to flag unauthorised trades in your account so you can catch them the same day
Can you opt out	No. The exchange alert is mandatory; you cannot switch it off, though a DND registration on your mobile can suppress the SMS
Why you might not receive them	Wrong contact details registered with the broker, or your mobile number on DND; update details or use email
How to verify a trade independently	Cross-check on the NSE and BSE websites, or against your Zerodha contract note and tradebook in Console

Zerodha trade SMS and email alerts are messages that the stock exchanges, National Stock Exchange , Bombay Stock Exchange and MCX, send directly to a retail client on every day that client trades, as a SEBI investor-protection measure to flag unauthorised trades in the account. The broker does not send them; the exchange does, using the mobile number and email that Zerodha reported to it at account opening. The point of the alert is that you read the SMS, recognise every trade in it, and raise an alarm the same day if a trade appears that you never placed.

This catches many investors by surprise. You place one order on Kite , and within hours an SMS arrives from a sender like “NSEMSG” or “BSEMSG” and an email lands from the exchange listing the trade. Some clients assume Zerodha is spamming them; others worry the message itself is a phishing attempt. Neither is right. The exchange alert is a mandated safeguard that sits on top of, and is separate from, Zerodha’s own in-app order and trade notifications.

This article explains who actually sends the message and why, what the alert contains, the SEBI and exchange mandate behind it, why you cannot opt out of it, the common reasons a client stops receiving it, how to tell a genuine exchange alert from a “stock tip” scam SMS, and how the trade alert sits alongside the weekly funds-and-securities email and the depository’s demat-debit SMS.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure. This guide is published by the WebNotes Editorial Team for informational purposes and is written independently. WebNotes operates a Zerodha account-opening referral programme, disclosed on the pages that carry the referral link; this guide does not carry it and earns no referral commission from the procedure described here.

Who sends the alert and why

The exchange sends it. When you open an account with any broker, the broker is required to share your mobile number and email with the exchanges, the depositories and the KYC registration agencies. NSE, BSE and MCX use that contact record to send you an SMS and email on the days you trade. Zerodha’s support desk states the purpose plainly: the alerts go out “as a measure to prevent unauthorised stock market trades via investor accounts.”

The logic is simple and predates Zerodha. If someone gains control of your trading account and places trades, the broker’s own systems might not stop them, because the orders carry your valid credentials. An independent message from the exchange, sent to a contact channel the intruder may not control, gives you a same-day chance to notice and react. That is why the alert comes from the exchange rather than the broker: it is a check on the broker-client channel itself, not a feature of it.

The same design runs through every parallel exchange alert. The exchanges also send a weekly SMS and email showing your funds and securities balance, which Zerodha describes as a SEBI requirement “to prevent misappropriation of funds.” The depositories, CDSL in Zerodha’s case, send an SMS whenever there is a debit on your demat account. Each one is the same idea applied to a different surface: trades, balances, and securities movements.

What the trade alert contains

The exchange SMS and email list the trades executed on your account that day. The message identifies the security, the buy or sell side and the quantity, enough for you to match it against the orders you placed on Kite. It is a summary confirmation, not a contract note. The legal record of the trade, with prices, charges and settlement detail, is the contract note Zerodha issues by end of day and the tradebook in Console .

Read the alert as a reconciliation prompt. Every trade in the SMS should correspond to a trade you placed. If the count or the scrips do not match what you did, that is the signal the alert exists to give you. The funds figure in the separate weekly balance SMS, by contrast, “reflects the balance as per the date mentioned in the message, not the date you received the SMS or email,” so do not be alarmed if a weekly balance looks dated; it is stamped to the message date.

The SEBI and exchange mandate

The trade-alert system is not a Zerodha policy; it is a regulatory requirement implemented by the exchanges. SEBI’s investor-protection framework requires that investors keep their mobile numbers and email IDs updated with their stock brokers and receive information of their transactions directly from the exchange on their mobile or email at the end of the day. The standard SEBI investor advisory that appears on broker and exchange material instructs investors to “update your mobile numbers/email IDs with your stock brokers” and to “receive information of your transactions directly from Exchange on your mobile/email at the end of the day.”

The weekly funds-and-securities alert rests on the same investor-protection rationale: it exists, per Zerodha’s support documentation, because SEBI requires it to prevent misappropriation of client funds and securities. These two alerts, the per-trade message and the weekly balance message, are the retail-facing edge of SEBI’s client-asset-protection regime, which also includes the requirement that brokers settle running account balances periodically and that client securities sit in the client’s own demat rather than a broker pool.

Why you cannot opt out

The exchange trade alert is mandatory. There is no setting in Kite or Console that switches it off, because it is not a Zerodha notification you control; it is an exchange dispatch driven by the regulatory mandate. The only mechanism that suppresses the SMS is a Do Not Disturb (DND) registration on your mobile number with your telecom operator. Zerodha’s support desk confirms a client “may not receive trade alerts if your mobile number is on DND.”

DND is a poor lever to pull here. It suppresses the SMS but not the email, so you do not escape the alerts; you only blind one channel. More to the point, you would be switching off a fraud-detection signal to avoid a message that arrives only on days you actually trade. For an active trader the volume can feel high, but the alert is doing exactly what it is meant to do, and the better response to alert fatigue is to read the messages quickly against your tradebook, not to silence them.

Why you might not be receiving the alert

The opposite problem, no alerts at all, is the more serious one, because it means your fraud-detection channel is dark. Zerodha identifies two causes. The first is incorrect contact details: you will not receive alerts “when your contact details registered with Zerodha are incorrect.” The fix is to update your registered mobile and email, which you can do through Zerodha’s online or offline account-modification process; see how to change your mobile number and how to change your email .

The second cause is DND. If your number is registered under Do Not Disturb, the SMS may be blocked even when your details are correct. In that case rely on the email channel, or de-register from DND. If your details are correct and you still receive nothing, Zerodha’s guidance is that you “can write to the exchanges requesting alerts for your trades,” contacting NSE, BSE or MCX directly. Until the alerts resume, verify your trades on the exchange websites or against your Console tradebook.

Distinguishing a genuine alert from a stock-tip scam

A genuine exchange trade alert lands only on days you trade, comes from an exchange sender ID, and lists trades you can match against your own activity. It never asks you to click a link, share an OTP, join a group, or buy a particular stock. That last point separates it from the “stock tip” scam SMS that floods new trading accounts.

Operators running a pump-and-dump already hold the stock and blast SMS, Telegram and WhatsApp messages to push the price up. Some impersonate Zerodha using look-alike sender names such as “ZRODHA” or “ZERDHA.” A real exchange alert tells you what you did; a scam message tells you what to do next. If you receive unsolicited stock tips, you can report them to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and to the exchanges. The exchange trade alert and the scam tip share a channel, SMS, but nothing else.

How this fits the wider alert system

The trade SMS is one of a family of automated messages a Zerodha client receives, each with a distinct trigger and source.

Alert	Sender	Trigger	Purpose
Trade confirmation SMS and email	Exchange (NSE, BSE, MCX)	Every day you trade	Catch unauthorised trades
Weekly funds and securities email	Exchange	Weekly	Prevent misappropriation of client funds
Demat debit SMS	Depository (CDSL)	Any debit to your demat	Catch unauthorised securities movement
Kite order and trade notifications	Zerodha	Each order and fill, if enabled	Real-time trade tracking
Kite price alerts	Zerodha	A price you set is hit	Trading workflow, not security

Only the first three are regulatory and unavoidable. The Kite notifications and price alerts are Zerodha conveniences you configure yourself; see how to add and customise Kite alerts . Reading the regulatory three against your own records is the cheapest fraud check available to a retail investor, and it costs nothing but the seconds it takes to glance at each message.

What can go wrong

Silencing the SMS via DND and assuming you are safe. DND suppresses the exchange SMS but not the email, and it removes a same-day fraud signal. Read the alerts instead of muting them.
Receiving no alerts at all. This usually means wrong contact details or a DND block. Update your registered mobile and email, and verify trades on the exchange websites until alerts resume.
Mistaking a scam tip SMS for an exchange alert. A real alert reports trades you placed and never tells you which stock to buy. Sender names like “ZRODHA” pushing a stock are impersonation; report them to TRAI and the exchanges.
Ignoring a trade SMS you cannot account for. A confirmation for a trade you never placed is a possible account compromise. Change your password, enable TOTP, and raise a ticket the same day.
Confusing the weekly balance figure with a live balance. The weekly funds SMS shows the balance as of the date stated in the message, not the day you read it.

External references

References

Zerodha support, Why do I receive SMS and email from NSE, BSE, and MCX when trading? (as of 21 June 2026).
Zerodha support, Why am I not receiving SMS and email trade alerts from the exchanges? (as of 21 June 2026).
Zerodha support, Why do exchanges send a weekly SMS and email regarding funds and securities balances? (as of 21 June 2026).
SEBI investor advisory on receiving transaction information directly from the exchange (standard investor caution carried on broker and exchange disclosures).

Frequently asked questions

Why do I get an SMS and email from NSE, BSE and MCX every time I trade on Zerodha?

The exchanges send these alerts as a SEBI investor-protection measure to flag unauthorised trades in your account. They use the mobile number and email your broker reported at account opening, so you can catch any transaction you did not place.

Does Zerodha send the trade SMS, or is it the exchange?

The exchange sends it, not Zerodha. NSE, BSE and MCX dispatch the SMS and email directly to retail clients on every trading day. Zerodha separately offers its own order and trade notifications inside the Kite app and on email, which are a different stream.

Can I stop the exchange trade alerts?

No, the exchange alert is mandatory and cannot be switched off. If you do not want the SMS, the only lever is a Do Not Disturb registration on your mobile number, which can suppress it, but you will still get the email and you lose a fraud-detection signal.

Why am I not receiving trade SMS alerts from the exchanges?

Either the contact details registered with Zerodha are incorrect, or your mobile number is on DND. Update your number and email through the account-modification process, and if details are correct you can write to the exchange requesting alerts.

What does the trade SMS contain?

The exchange message lists the trades executed on your account that day, identifying the scrip, the buy or sell side and the quantity, so you can match it against trades you actually placed. Verify the detail against your contract note and tradebook.

Is the trade SMS the same as the weekly funds and securities email?

No. The trade SMS goes out only on days you trade. Separately, the exchanges send a weekly SMS and email showing your funds and securities balance, a SEBI measure to prevent misappropriation of client funds. Both are investor-protection alerts but different in trigger.

I got a trade SMS for a trade I never placed. What do I do?

Treat it as a possible unauthorised-trade or account-compromise signal. Check your Console tradebook and contract note, change your Kite password immediately, enable TOTP, and raise a ticket with Zerodha. Do not ignore a trade alert you cannot account for.

Reviewed and published by

WebNotes Editorial Team

The WebNotes Editorial Team covers Indian capital markets, payments infrastructure and retail investor procedures. Every article is fact-checked against primary sources, principally SEBI circulars and master directions, NPCI specifications and the official support documentation published by the intermediary in question. Drafts go through a second-pair-of-eyes review and a separate compliance read before publication, and revisions are tracked against the SEBI and NPCI rule changes referenced in the methodology section.

Last reviewed: 20 June 2026
Conflicts of interest: WebNotes is independent. No relationship with any broker, registrar or bank named in this article.