Nasscom for One-Step Authentication for Small Online Payments

Mumbai, Dec 10 (PTI) Software industry body Nasscom today said the Reserve Bank should allow single-factor authentication for small ticket e-commerce transactions at the earliest.

"It is good to be conservative in matters involving money, but there shall be a review of the same, especially when technologies are rapidly changing," Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI here.

He said Nasscom has written to the central bank two days ago asking for a shift to single-factor authentication for small value transactions, and expects the monetary authority to implement the changes at the earliest.

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RBI Deputy Governor HR Khan yesterday had said that the central bank would come out with some new norms to make online transactions easier and that it will soon issue norms for single-factor authentication for low value e-commerce transactions without any compromise on security.

"One area is that we are looking at small payments where we have two-factor authentication now. Whether we can create a system where we can avoid the second factor authentication so that the small transactions can happen... (for) arrangement between customer liability and provider liability, we can work out something. We are discussing with banks on this," Khan had said in New Delhi.

A two-step authentication is generally prevalent in the country unlike developed nations. First step of authentication is feeding PIN and the next step is punching in secure code or one-time pin (OTP). "Maybe we will go for a small amount where we need not have second factor authentication.

That amount could be (Rs) 1000, 2000 or 3000," he said, adding "I am not able to tell your the amount at the moment, but that is what we are working at so that small value, low ticket we can get out of the second factor authentication without compromising on customer's liability and provider's liability," Khan had said. In August, the RBI had asked the US-based cab services provider Uber, which has been banned in Delhi following an rape of a passenger by one of its cab drivers, was asked to stop accepting single-factor authentication.

Source: PTI