RBI Steps In With These Measures To Make Digital Transactions Safer

To minimize the risk of fraud associated with digital payments transactions and to ensure safety of financial data of customers, RBI in a notification 'Guidelines on regulation of payment aggregators and payment gateways' dated March 17, 2020 issued a slew of guidelines for payment gateways as well as payment aggregators to render digital payments transactions indeed more seamless and safe.

RBI Steps In With These Measures To Make Digital Transactions Safer

So, here's how your digital transaction would get safer after the new guidelines

1. ATM PIN Option will No More be Available to Validate Online Transactions:

Payment aggregators including the likes of CC Avenue, Razorpay henceforth will not give an option of ATM Pin for validating or completing an online transaction. This way ATM PIN will not be revealed to payment gateways, aggregators or even a hacker if the case be. So, this simply means that for transactions over Rs. 2000, you will be able to verify a transaction mandatorily using just one-time password or OTP received on your registered mobile number or e-mail.

Further as per RBI guidelines, the verification using OTP for online transactions valued less than Rs. 2000 is optional. Notably, in December 2016, the RBI relaxed the provision of multi-factor authentication for low-valued transactions up to Rs. 2000/ transaction.

2. Refunds To Be Credited To Original Payment Source:

In the current regime, most of the e-tailers by default or compulsorily credit refunds (due to returns or transaction cancellation) into the e-wallet account that are established on their own platform. But the recent RBI directive asks aggregators to ensure that refunds are credited back to the original payment source unless specifically agreed to by the customer for credit in some alternate account. This way customers money shall also not remain blocked in any of the particular wallets. Notably, this may not apply in case of eligible cashbacks for the different executed online transactions.

3. Customer Grievances:

For addressing customer grievance, aggregators in the network have been directed to appoint a nodal officer. As per the notification, "Payment aggregators shall put in place a formal, publicly disclosed customer grievance redressal and dispute management framework, including designating a nodal officer to handle the customer complaints / grievances and the escalation matrix. The complaint facility, if made available on website / mobile shall be clearly and easily accessible."

4. Background Screening of Merchants:

To further streamline digital payments, payment aggregators have been advised to undertake background check of merchants and affirm that such merchants do not work with the intention of cheating on customers, do not engage in selling counterfeit or fake or prohibited products etc. Also, the merchant website should feature with clarity terms and conditions relating to the service as well as time line associated with processing of refunds and returns.

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