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Program on Digital Payment Awareness organized in IP College in collaboration with DU Culture Council
Indraprastha College for Women in collaboration with Culture Council, University of Delhi and Reserve Bank of India organized a program on Digital Payment Awareness. Ever since the introduction of online payment methods like UPI and the push for digitisation by the Government of India, the popularity of online transactions for making purchases and payment of bills has been growing exponentially in the country. Mr. Satish Nagpal, Officer, DPSS and Mr. Vikas Tyagi, Manager, DPSS from RBI delivered a talk to create awareness about various methods of digital payments and safeguards while using these methods.
They explained about the different modes, processes and purpose of online payments like NEFT, RTGS, IMPS, BBPS and UPI that can be used by individuals. They explained that NEFT and IMPS can be used for retail payments and RTGS is used for bulk payments. All these modes have some cooling period as a safeguard measure to prevent frauds and enable the payer to raise a complaint in case the payment has been made fraudulently. This cooling period is shorter for private banks to enable faster transactions and longer for public banks to enable greater protection. BBPS is the Bharat Bill Payment System which is used for payment of utility bills and carries the feature that bills can be paid periodically on an automatic basis. UPI is a concept which has been innovated in India and is not used in any other country. It enables instant payments for small and large denominations.
The speakers explained that the processes used by RBI to enable all these forms of transaction are very secure and use a two-factor authentication, based on the system of one-time password (OTP). It has been specially designed to protect users who may not be literate while encouraging their financial inclusion by enabling them to participate in digital transactions without being cheated. The use of OTP is unique to India and enables a fool proof security to all users online transactions only on Indian websites. If a transaction is made on a foreign website, this security is not available.
They also shared useful information about the safeguards that people should follow while carrying out these transactions to protect themselves against frauds. Audience were told that they should never share their OTP, credit card CVV & expiry date, or account holder information with anyone to prevent any fraudulent transactions. It was pointed out that there is a difference between account information and account holder information. The audience were also told that the modus operandi of those indulging in fraud may keep changing. What is important to be kept in mind is that their tricks are built upon the exploitation of human emotions of fear, greed and sympathy. Technology in the form of using CCTV cameras to take pictures of cards, passwords on ATMs and sending fraudulent links on text & WhatsApp messages, and emails. Audience were cautioned from clicking suspicious links which are used to clone the information on the device of the user.
RBI has also given directives
to all banks and credit card companies to store the information of the users on
servers maintained in India so that they lie in the jurisdiction of Indian laws
pertaining to data protection. RBI is in the process of introducing a system
where online merchants like Amazon, Myntra etc. cannot save the credit card or
netbanking information of the users. They are also in the process of
introducing “Tokenisation”, which will be 4digit number specific to a
particular device and merchant for any user, where instead of using the credit
card or netbanking information this token may be used for transactions.
The audience were informed that, as per law, in case of a fraudulent online transaction, they should raise a complaint to the concerned bank/ Ombudsman within three days to obtain full refund. If the complaint is made within 4-7 days, then the users might have to bear some loss depending on the nature of the account.
The talk was followed by an
engaging Question and Answer session. The program was immensely successful and
was attended by about 400 people comprising students, teaching faculty and
non-teaching staff.