[avdhesh15]

Originally Posted by Nonstop-driver

As wrongturn said, international transactions don't need an OTP.

Noob question - can't the OTP / pin be mandated for all transactions, be it local or international?

[Nonstop-driver]

Originally Posted by avdhesh15

Noob question - can't the OTP / pin be mandated for all transactions, be it local or international?

The OTP norms are applied by RBI as far as I know. Since it is not applied on payment gateways placed outside in India, the transaction won't ask for OTP.

[avdhesh15]

Originally Posted by Nonstop-driver

The OTP norms are applied by RBI as far as I know. Since it is not applied on payment gateways placed outside in India, the transaction won't ask for OTP.

But can't RBI mandate this considering the frauds happening so regularly? Or is it some international standard?

[Brumby]

After this incident I wrote mails to VISA (it was a VISA card) and to RBI as well. I remember mentioning about the response that I got from my bank and what if it was a debit card and not a credit card. VISA did reply to my mail but RBI did not even respond to have received the mail. I asked RBI that if there is no security that is provided to the credit and and debit cards why the customers are forced to have a debit cum ATM card. In 2012 there were no PIN numbers or OTPs either for the debit or credit cards (for most of the banks), it was just a swipe and the money is gone. As GTO mentioned, its good that it was credit card and not a debit one. In case of a debit card, its your money from your account that is lost and bank does not have to pay anyone.

[sumathindra]

My 2 cents on this - Whenever I pay by card at petrol bunks,

1. I make it a point first to get out of the car, give the card to the attendant and then take the POS machine from him and then enter the pin trying to cover the keypad as much as possible.

2. If I am on my bike, I make it a point to park the bike to a side and follow then above steps again.

Many a times in between the filling, they ask for the card or cash which i politely decline asking them whats the hurry? They cannot and will not say anything. When we buy any commodities/white goods etc. do we pay in between? no right, then why for fuel.

Another way is leverage paytm.

[subhro1988]

Originally Posted by gkveda

Citi officers informed me that although these transactions are already approved, they will raise dispute when Merchant claims the amount and I will MOSTLY be protected through their standard investigation process.

I also have a Citibank credit card and suddenly one fine morning, two months back, received an sms on my phone and an e-mail saying that Rs. 6000 spent on GOOGLE SERVICES online along with 5 other attempts of Rs. 60 each which were not honoured. I immediately called up Citibank and blocked my card. I do not have Google play account and i do not use android phone. So I knew something was fishy. The Citibank phone executive confirmed that this is a common fraud and they will investigate and reverse the charges. Thankfully, Citibank reversed the charges within 15 days.

I was planning to report the same to Cyber Crime Department of Police, BKC, Mumbai but thankfully Citi reversed the charges and thus I did not report.

I received a new Citi card within 3 days after blocking.

[yogesh.8984]

One reason I can think of not having OTP requirement for international transactions - user might not have working cell phone connection to receive OTP while travelling abroad. I have seen this with many types of credit cards. Though this is an easy solution, it leads to frauds as already mentioned here.

Couple of ways to get around this -

1. Use of app to generate OTP (Ex. ICICI has I-SAFE app for the same). Other banks should also have similar solutions.
2. Block the credit card for any international transactions as we may not do international transactions on day to day basis. Blocking and unblocking is pretty easy (just a call to customer care and 3 minutes of time). I have done it multiple times. Though little cumbersome, I would prefer to be safe than sorry.

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by sumathindra

Another way is leverage paytm.

Agree, Paytm is now my first choice for fuel payments. I generally do not keep any balance in my wallet, so what I do is to quickly top it up before I reach the pump.

This avoids waiting at the pump itself.

[vinit.merchant]

I do not think your card details were stolen at the bunk. It must have happened online, on some not so famous site. You could have transacted months earlier. The fraudsters could have saved your data, along with many others, and then pick one card and use it as much as possible before it getting blocked.

[madhav]

I had a problem with my Citibank credit card recently. I use this card only for online payments of my utility bills and shopping on reputed sites. One one evening I started receiving SMS's stating that my card was used on freelancer.com, orbitz.com and ezetopup. I immediately called and blocked my card. All these are online (international) sites and do not require a OTP/Pin to be entered. Hence it has to be only my card number and CVV. I always scratch out the CVV on my card once I make a mental note of it so that even if the card is lost/stolen no transactions can be done. So clearly, in this case, some website has been compromised as they have had access to my card number and CVV when I have done payments through them.

[vinu_h]

Originally Posted by subhro1988

I also have a Citibank credit card and suddenly one fine morning, two months back, received an sms on my phone and an e-mail saying that Rs. 6000 spent on GOOGLE SERVICES online along with 5 other attempts of Rs. 60 each which were not honoured. .

The very same thing happened to my wife's savings account at SBI. ~25k withdrawn in 2 minutes via 60+ transactions. A letter to the branch manager solved the problem.

[WhiteFang]

One way to mitigate potential loss is by keeping your credit card limit under check. Very often I recieve calls from my bank for increasing the limit and I used to decline because of this reason only. It feels good to have a bigger limit but most of us never get a chance to use it. For emergency purposes you may consider getting another card (with higher limit) without any annual maintenance fee.

[batish]

Originally Posted by GTO

. And there's a reason for that I'm guessing. The merchants (where the card was used) aren't reimbursed by the banks immediately, so they can always cancel the fraudulent transaction.

AFAIK, No. They get the money immediately. For example, When you add money on Paytm it is reflected immediately. Same is the case with other merchants. If they were to be reimbursed after sometime it would be a loss to the seller and then a customer could dispute even for genuine transaction, which would lead to a lengthy verification process.
I might be wrong on this though.

After demonetisation the number of digital transactions increased, so were the fraudulent activities then the RBI stepped in with this notification to gain trust and protect the interest of consumers.

Originally Posted by avdhesh15

Noob question - can't the OTP / pin be mandated for all transactions, be it local or international?

Originally Posted by Nonstop-driver

The OTP norms are applied by RBI as far as I know. Since it is not applied on payment gateways placed outside in India, the transaction won't ask for OTP.

I have a PNB Debit Card. Whenever I shop on Aliexpress, it asks me for OTP no matter what the amount is, or where the payment gateway is located.

But for Citibank Credit Card, it just accepts the payment without any OTP.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by batish

AFAIK, No. They get the money immediately.....

Credit Card payments are a two-step process. User authorizing payment at the POS terminal, then the merchant reconciling transactions periodically with the bank. Most merchants will do it EoD in bulk, or once every couple of days.

On your card's online account, there will be an 'unbilled transactions' section listing the ones where the merchant is yet to reconcile the payment with the bank. The money is blocked from your 'Available Credit Limit', but the transaction is not posted to your card account until the merchant claims it.

[actinium15]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Credit Card payments are a two-step process. User authorizing payment at the POS terminal, then the merchant reconciling transactions periodically with the bank. Most merchants will do it EoD in bulk, or once every couple of days.

On your card's online account, there will be an 'unbilled transactions' section listing the ones where the merchant is yet to reconcile the payment with the bank. The money is blocked from your 'Available Credit Limit', but the transaction is not posted to your card account until the merchant claims it.

The portion of your comment explaining the two-step process is correct, but the unbilled-transactions are pretty much what they are - "unbilled" transactions; i.e., the credit card card bill containing those hasn't been generated yet. It has no direct bearing* on whether the merchant has claimed the transaction or not. As you mention, reconcilation of transactions is a daily affair mostly (depending on transaction volume the frequency could be adjusted by merchant).

As far as I know, cost due to reverted fraudulent transactions is borne by the bank (not the merchant), which then claims it back from their own insurers.


*apropos indirect bearing to unbilled transactions: there's a possibility that by the time the credit card bill is generated the merchant might have canceled/reverted the transaction from their end (e.g., if amount was debited twice) - in that case they'd not appear in the final bill.