Make phone banking more secure or face penalty: RBI

Banks will have to soon put in place an additional authentication cover for their credit and debit card customers transacting over phone, or get penalised. Taking forward its efforts to tackle identity frauds in non-branch banking transactions, the Reserve Bank has asked all the banks operating in the country to put in place by next year a system where credit and debit card customers would need to provide an additional password for IVR (interactive voice response) transactions.

IVR transactions are done over phone, wherein customers dial bank’s customer care number and are prompted by a recorded voice to dial designated digits for different kinds of transactions such as balance enquiry, bill payment etc.