If you are also not receiving bank OTP messages in your SMS inbox, you are certainly not alone. Over the past two days, reports of OTP not coming on phone have flooded the internet, causing a considerable stir and highlighting the chaos that digital payment downtime can have in our everyday life. However, the actual reason behind this turns out to be not your operator’s network quality, but the latest anti-spam technology that is being implemented to restrict spam telemarketers on their tracks.
As reports have revealed, many users began witnessing difficulty in getting banking OTP messages in their SMS inboxes since the night of Sunday, March 7. The actual reason behind this is the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), which is India’s new blockchain technology implementation to reduce spams and scams today. DLT has necessitated banks and other digital payment services to follow a new messaging template for authorised automated messaging services. This new template will also be screened by telecom operators for compliance with the recommended format, and all banking and financial services will need to gain clearance before they can operate their bulk messaging services.
It is this, reports state, that may have broken OTP services widely. The onus lies on banks as well, who appear to have missed the set deadline for DLT implementation, and are now struggling to get their bulk messaging services back online. The technology is expected to iron out scammers from using bulk SMS services to target unsuspecting users, which has also led to a well documented rise in the amount of phishing and identity scams in India.
As of now, OTP services of most major banks and digital payment apps should be back online. However, users have continued to report intermittent issues across all banks and payment services, and it may take a while until all services are brought back to normalcy. Until then, users are advised to use OTP on call services to get one-time passwords, without which digital payments are barred in India.
