Know your 16-digit card no.? Online payments may require more than CVV

Online transactions may become more cumbersome but probably safer if the Reserve Bank of India goes ahead with its plans to make it mandatory for customers to add lot more verification details besides just keying in the CVV number.

The RBI’s new revised guidelines are however aimed at making a person’s card information more secure.

According to news reports, the RBI is contemplating making it compulsory for customers to enter all their card details, including the name, 16-digit card number and expiry date, besides the CVV number for every online payment.

A CVV number or a card verification value is a 3-digit code on the back of a credit or a debit card, whereas a 16-digit number is the card’s number printed on the front of the card. Media reports added the new regulations will most probably come into effect from January of 2022.

Also read: RBI announces new bank locker rules. Read on to find out what has changed

In effect, what this means to the common person is that after the rules are amended, every time you make a purchase on Amazon and Flipkart, or make a payment through Paytm and Google Pay, or renew your subscription on one of the OTT platforms, you will have to key in all these details.

Card-users were apprehensive of the fact that typing out all the details for every transaction may become tedious especially for those with more than one card.

However, this will prevent payment aggregators such as Google Pay and PayTM, e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Flipkart from storing customers’ card information on their servers and databases and further ensure customer safety and data security.

Currently, all this information about people’s cards is stored in e-commerce merchant sites and payment gateways. And, only the CVV and a one-time password (OTP) are required to get the transaction going.

But, if the RBI new guidelines comes into play, you may just need a brain like the late math whiz Shakuntala Devi!.