OTP cost: Is the industry feeling the pinch and started passing the cost directly to customers?
One Time Password is one of the most widely used method to verify the authenticity, genuineness and validity of the users on mobile and internet transactions in India. Millions of OTP are generated every day. Most of the service providers provide this facility FREE of Cost to their customers.
But now some of them have started the pass this cost to their customers.
Yesterday when I downloaded a banking mobile app, it charged me INR 1.20 to send the OTP for user verification & authentic process, which is quite unusual case and never happened before. A friend who is from telecom industry and has worked on similar products of banking, payments, told me that industry spends millions everyday to offer such services to their customers and it’s a huge expense on their balance sheet.
Now the question is: Will the customers be ready to pay for this procedure to verify their authenticity and transaction? Or should the industry keep on bearing this cost despite of tough market competition?
If the industries pass it to the customers, how will they justify their action? What would be the government’s stand on it when government itself is promoting Digital India to encourage digital payments?