Memorise your 16-digit card number! It’s likely to be mandatory for online payments

New Delhi: In its revised set of guidelines, the Reserve bank of India (RBI) could make it mandatory for credit and debit card holders to enter 16-digit card number every time they shop online as opposed to entering the card verification value (CVV) and the one-time password (OTP).

The revised guidelines are aimed at securing the card information of customers. For now, customers are required to fill the CVV number and an OTP is sent by their bank to complete transactions. The new regulations are likely to kick in from January of 2022, according to media reports.

The central bank has refused to change its decision to disallow e-commerce giants and merchants such as Amazon, Netflix and Flipkart from storing customer card details in their databases. These payment aggregators play a key role in transactions as they link the customer and the merchant.

After the new changes are introduced, customers who own a debit or credit card will have to enter their 16-digit card details name, card number, expiry date and CVV every time they do a transaction.

The apex bank was supposed to bring in the new guidelines in July but then it had to postpone it by six months as a few other banks were not ready to implement them.

The RBI wants you to memorise your card details for various online transactions to prevent online merchants and payment aggregators from storing a customer’s card details online on their servers. 

Since making payments using credit and debit cards may become complex after the new policy is implemented, people can switch to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for easier payments.