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Comment by Charuru | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me like it was the government that started the whole mess.

It usually is :) but cleartrip might just be right here to blame the banks. Asking for more secure authentication is a good idea, particularly in India where on more than one occasion, I've had to stop people from writing down my credit card number for "the record".

That transaction volumes decreased on the /first/ day 3-D secure (and now, the one-time password) was implemented is hardly surprising, but I think once customers get used to it it would have returned back to normal.

I agree with your point I have found it hard to prevent merchants from writing down credit card numbers(!!!) and these additional layers of security are needed for the market. On the contrary, though I am a regular user of credit / debit cards for online transactions in India - atleast 3-5 times a month, I have found it really hard to use my credit card from the beginning of the month since they introduced the one-time-password.

I have not been able to use my credit card even once since this was introduced due to various reasons - the SMS service that banks are supposed to deliver One-Time-Password is not sent promptly or I do not have a way to get password to authorize even an IVR transaction in time.

It might all work out after initial issues are resolved but so far I find this to be a pain.

I believe the banks do offer an alternative to go online and generate an OTP.

Of course, this does defeat the purpose of an IVR transaction :)

For what it's worth, I'm optimistic: the banks might listen to customer complaints and actually do something about it. I admit that I have no idea what they could do: AFAIK there's no way a telco could even guarantee that a SMS is delivered immediately after it is sent

Interesting to learn. Thanks!

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