Ease of making payments seems to be distant dream for consumers

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) move to bring in a single-factor authentication for transactions below Rs 2,000 seems to be a distant dream as most banks are reluctant to allow such transactions as they risks in them.

The apex bank had modified its authentication norm in December 2016 — a month after demonetisation was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi— to make online payments easier.

However, the consumers still have to press the four-digit mandatory password into the point of sale (POS) machine at shops and restaurants.

The commercial banks say they are not comfortable with the confidence that the RBI has shown in the IT security capability of e-commerce platforms and they also see risk in allowing single-authentication payment.

As a result, the consumers have to do multiple entries for making a single payment for even the lowest of amount. Banks insist on keying debit or credit card number, CVV (card verification value), expiry or issuing date of the card and the PIN or password or OTP (one-time password).

The banks argue that in the case of an online fraud, they are expected to handle the case as the final banking service provider, the onus to secure transactions made by their customers lies on them, said bankers.

Kotak Mahindra, however, allows its customers make payment through single-factor authentication process.

But the bank has permitted this service for only select e-commerce or merchant sites like Amazon, Flipkart, BookMyShow, Tata Sky, redBus, BigBasket and Swiggy.

Consumers still have to press the four-digit mandatory password into the point of sale machine at shops and restaurants