Paytm Promises To Do Away With One-Time Passwords

Digital wallet company Paytm is working on a new security feature for its payments bank transactions to replace one-time password notifications, which would make its transactions more secure, founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma told BloombergQuint.

Paytm is in the final leg of setting up its payments bank and is awaiting necessary approvals from the RBI. Once those come through, Paytm will merge its wallet service with the payments bank, the company had earlier said in a media statement.

“One thing that we have lately learned is to not to use the concept of OTP because anything that you give consumers, they probably share, and this is one of the concept changes we are coming out with in our systems. When we get our payments bank, we will try finding out how we can remove OTP as a concept so that our bank accounts are secure," Sharma said.

Currently, a one-time password is sent to a registered phone number to authenticate payments made digitally.

Sharma also said that Paytm’s user base has expanded to around 17.2 crore post demonetisation from 15.2 crore users, and that transactions worth Rs 100-120 crore are done daily on the e-wallet’s platform.

Paytm’s payments bank will be operational by the first quarter of the next financial year and a final application has been sent to the Reserve Bank of India, Sharma said. He is targetting at least 25-30 million customers within the first year of start of operations.