Mumbai, Sept. 25 -- Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has today issued Reserve Bank of India (Authentication Mechanisms for Digital Payment Transactions) Directions, 2025. RBI had issued draft directions on Alternative Authentication Mechanisms for Digital Payment Transactions on July 31, 2024 and draft directions on introduction of Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) in cross-border Card Not Present (CNP) transactions on February 07, 2025, for stakeholder comments.

The directions focus on the following:

Encouraging introduction of new factors of authentication by leveraging upon technological advancements. The framework, however, does not call for discontinuation of SMS based OTP as an authentication factor.

Enabling issuers to adopt ...