India cenbank proposes more options to authenticate digital payments

MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s central bank on Wednesday proposed to allow a wider set of alternatives, including fingerprints and passwords, as additional factors of authentication for all digital transactions.

An additional factor of authentication requires two or more ways of verifying the identity of the user, typically used to reduce fraud and cyber crime.

Currently, India does not have any rules for how to authenticate digital payments, but the industry has primarily adopted text-based one-time passwords for authorisation.

The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday proposed to allow other options like fingerprints, passwords or personal identification numbers as additional factors of authentication, according to a draft circular.

It has also said passphrases, card hardwares or software tokens could be used for authenticating digital transactions.

(Reporting by Siddhi Nayak; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)