The e-commerce industry in India needs to brace for the coming of a lull in transactions, which owes its origin to a notification from the Reserve Bank of India. According to the notification, it order to enhance the security of online card transactions, it will become mandatory from August 1st 2009 onwards, to provide: 1. A system of providing for additional authentication/validation based on information not visible on the cards for all on-line card not present transactions except IVR transactions. 2. A system of "Online Alerts" to the cardholder for all "card not present" transactions of the value of Rs. 5,000/ and above. Implications Travel Portal Cleartrip recently set up a page to help its users register at various bank sites for Verified by Visa and Mastercard Secure verification norms which banks in India are adopting in order to comply with point 1 mentioned above. Hrush Bhatt, co-founder, Cleartrip, told MediaNama that for completing transactions, merchants will have to re-direct consumers to bank sites, which will require the additional password for verification of payment. For methods that involve redirection, payment failures are around 10 times more. Bhatt said that though the RBI circular is correct in spirit, but the manner in which this is being implemented, is going to cause disruption for customers and merchants. Cleartrip is gearing up for at least a 2-3 week disruption, "when people won't know what this stuff is. Hopefully, after that people will enroll." ICICI Bank is planning to mandate usage of these additional…
