back to article India contemplates compulsory dynamic 2FA for digital payments

India's central bank on Wednesday proposed a requirement for dynamically generated second authentication factors for most digital payments. "Reserve Bank of India had mandated additional factor of authentication (AFA) for all transactions undertaken using cards, prepaid instruments and mobile banking channels," explained the …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Stop

    So OTP is fine, but biometrics is better ?

    This is clearly a push to get to using biometrics. The issue remaining the same : I can't change my face if the database gets hacked, and we all know that it will.

    Leave my face alone.

    1. Wellyboot Silver badge

      Re: So OTP is fine, but biometrics is better ?

      Madness, for the last couple of years one decent picture is all that's needed to produce utterly convincing fake video.

      Using an official ID as the source picture will give criminal types the best possible starting point.

    2. loops

      Re: So OTP is fine, but biometrics is better ?

      I can't say for sure what this system entails, because of course, they haven't even decided yet, but most biometric systems don't work that way. In most systems, your face/fingerprint/whatever (voice being the obvious exception to this rule) never leaves your local device (phone, tablet, pc...). You authenticate biometrically locally, then a key-pair exchange authenticates to the remote service.

      A large part of the reason for this is that nobody wants the hassle of securing biometric data nor being responsible for it when it leaks.

  2. Tron Silver badge

    We need to keep tech from being controlled by governments.

    Because governments are rubbish at everything they do.

    Can't wait for foreign tourists in India discovering that they cannot pay for anything, anywhere courtesy of India-only MFA.

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