Card payment companies have finally got what they've been asking for: To boost online transactions through cards, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has removed the additional factor of authentication (AFA) for payments up to Rs 2,000. However, for this model, card issuing banks will have to offer the “payment authentication solutions” of the respective card networks to their customers on an optional basis. Customers opting for this facility will go through a one-time registration process requiring entry of card details, etc. and AFA by the issuing bank. Thereafter, the registered customers will not be required to re-enter the card details for every transaction at merchant locations that offer this solution. In this model, the card details already registered would be the first factor of authentication. The credentials used to login to the solution (as confirmed by the card network providing the solution) would be the additional factor of authentication. Mastercard has a payment authentication solution in form of MasterCard Securecode while Visa has a similar offering via Visa Checkout. No word from RuPay regarding such a service yet. However, it is unclear if a customer will always be logged into these payment authentication solutions or if they have to enter a password to authenticate the transaction. We have contacted MasterCard and several banks regarding this and will update once we hear from them. Does this mean there can be an auto-debit from a card? Many International online services, such as Netflix, allow auto-debit without a second factor of authentication, because it…
