OTPs: Making your Banking Transactions Safer

Spending

oi-Shoaib MD

By Shoaib Md

Published: Monday, April 18, 2011, 16:30 [IST]

Banking community has always been concerned over the possible misuse of a stolen credit card or stolen credit card information. Therefore, to enhance the security and minimize any such untoward incident, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) the banking regulator instructed all banks to bring the feature of One Time Password (OTP) for all transactions made with Credit Card whether it be using the Telephone or the Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

This OTP will be a single use password that will expire immediately on completion of the transaction. If the transaction is not processed then the OTP will have an expiry time of maximum 2 hours. It will entirely depend upon the bank's policy, Citi Bank claims that their OTP if not utilized will expire in 5 minutes.

With the security design in place, customers would need 5 sets of information to carry out a credit card transaction over phone:

1] The 16-digit card number
2] Card expiry date
3] CVV (Card Verification Value, which is printed on the back of the card) number,
4] Mobile number
5] The OTP.

The most important point to remember here is that your mobile number must be registered with the bank.

How the OTP works for various banks:

Axis Bank
OTP should reach you by SMS on the registered mobile number while carrying out the transaction.

HDFC Bank
Send SMS: 'PWD (last 4 digits of credit card)' to 9717465555 from your registered mobile.

ICICI Bank
Send an SMS 'IOTP (last 4 digits of credit card)' to 5676766 from your registered mobile.

Citi Bank
Send an SMS 'OTP (last 4 digits of credit card)' to 9880752484 from your registered mobile.

SBI
Send an SMS 'OTP (last 4 digits of credit card)' to 5676791 from your registered mobile.

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