We are becoming more and more dependent on Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for our daily activities. From paying bills to ordering a Pizza, we prefer IVR. Why wouldn’t we?, when its a lot more comfortable and enables us to do the work without having us leave home. But with the growing IVR transactions, fraud and scams are emerging as major concerns.
No matter how secure the transactions are claimed to be, by the bank; people find ways to exploit them. In an another attempt to tackle this problem RBI introduced OTP, which stands for One Time Password, for IVR transactions few months back, but it wasn’t fully functional until lately.
What is OTP?
As mentioned above, it stand for One Time Password.When ever any consumer buys through a call, they get an SMS with a small piece of text code. They have to verify the purchase with this SMS. It has been made mandatory for every service using IVR for transactions from DTH TV to mobile recharge, by the RBI.
How does this work?
When you order any product/recharge via the IVR, you will receive an OTP on your mobile number registered with the Credit Card used. You then have to verify that OTP to the selling party.
For example:- If you choose to recharge/pay your bills via Mcheck on Airtel.
Once you get an OTP on your mobile number registered with your credit card, you then have to send it to 543219.
The Validity of each OTP ranges from 30 minutes to 24 hours.
One short coming is, suppose you have to make 2 or more transactions, you will have to complete the first transaction including verification of OTP and only then will you be able to proceed with the second transaction. If you choose to do both the transactions simultaneously, the second OTP generated will overwrite the first OTP and your first transaction will not be completed successfully.
Though a bit annoying, it looks a lot secure. I say “looks” because it won’t take too long for hackers and scammers to find a way out and breach this security. So the best way to secure your online/IVR transactions is to be extremely cautious and never ever reveal any confidential info to others.
