Many people – especially youngsters – are doing their Diwali shopping online to grab the lucrative deals and discounts offered by e-commerce sites like Amazon (having the Great Indian Festival sale), Flipkart (having the Big Diwali sale), etc.
Apart from heavy discounts on the products, customers can also get additional deals, discounts, cashbacks by choosing certain payment options.
However, with the excitement of grabbing a lucrative deal, you shouldn’t put your guard down and let fraudsters clean up your hard-earned money.
“With digital payments accounting to over 2/3rds of all payments in the payments ecosystem and phone becoming the primary mode of transaction for these payments, caution is imperative, to prevent falling prey to frauds or theft or compromise of personal information,” said Anil Pinapala, CEO & Founder of Vivifi India Finance.
Pinapala lists the following steps to protect your money while making digital transactions:
- Use only trusted sources to download the apps used to make payments. Leave the page immediately, if redirected to a suspicious link.
- Avoid using shared public devices or open Wi-Fi networks while making a payment, as it can prove extremely risky and increase the likelihood of data theft.
- Never share OTPs with anyone. That information should not be compromised as trusted apps never call to ask for such confidential data. In addition to giving them access to your bank and personal information, this could result in theft.
- When making digital payments, never rush. Make sure you receive a receipt for all of your payments.
- Always cross-check the permissions that any newly downloaded app is requesting, do not click “Yes to all”. Spend time researching the credibility of the downloaded app.
Cautioning people against online fraudsters, Amit Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Easebuzz said, “From credit cards to mobile wallets to everything in between, digital payments have become a popular option for making payments by consumers. This is reflected in the recent report by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),in which digital payment transactions were scaled to 7,422 crore in FY 2021-22 from 5,554 crores in FY2020-21.”
“With exploding digital adoption, there comes a need to make the payment infrastructure and ecosystem secure, reliable and fraud free. Banks and Payment platforms including Wallets,Card Issuers, Payment Gateway companies have to ensure safety of consumer and payment transaction data,” he added.
As fraudsters are on the prowl to take away your money, you need to be very careful while making online payments.
“Consumers also need to know the best practices to safeguard their payment transaction and be vigilant with what and whom they are sending money to and ensure they never share their confidential personal and banking details like Account Number, CVV, OTP, PIN etc,” said Kumar.
“Apart from being vigilant, customers should also consider opting for secure encryptions like tokenisation, an initiative by RBI to protect sensitive consumer data from frauds,” he added.