You don’t need to be anxious any more that your ‘one-time password’ is taking too long to land on your smartphone to complete a digital payment.

This is because Mastercard, a technology company in the global payments industry, has pretty much brought the ‘tap and go’ mobile payment experience to mainstream e-commerce in India.

It has launched a new solution – Identity Check Express – to create a completely friction-free digital payment experience for online shopping.

This mobile-first authentication solution aims to redefine the e-commerce journey for millions of Indian consumers by obviating the need for an OTP to authenticate consumers putting through mobile transactions.

Identity Check Express was showcased here at the Global Mastercard Cybersecurity Summit, which was held for the first time in India.

“With the launch of Identity Check Express, we are taking a big consumer pain point away. This product uses very sophisticated technology of 200 data elements to identify you, and is essentially multi-factor authentication and not just two-factor (as in India),” said Ajay Bhalla, President, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions, Mastercard.

This is a solution that has been developed by global teams, along with Indian teams, to specially handle a problem that Indian consumers are facing, he said.

A big point of pain

According to an analysis by Mastercard, OTP has been a big point of pain and friction for Indian consumers, largely due to sluggish data speeds and high OTP delivery failure rate. Up to 20 per cent of mobile e-commerce transactions are abandoned mid-way, the analysis revealed.

India is the first market where Mastercard is launching the Identity Check Express. It sees relevance of this solution in other markets in Asia and Europe, where stronger consumer authentication is required.

With Identity Check Express, Mastercard will offer a frictionless payment experience to Mastercard cardholders at leading merchants for amounts less than ₹2,000 on their trusted mobile device by sharing a one-time merchant specific consent. For transactions greater than ₹2,000, cardholders will be able to authenticate themselves with a transaction PIN of their choice.

Bob Reany, EVP, Cyber and Intelligence Solutions, Mastercard, said OTP’s vulnerabilities are well known and is essentially an outdated technology.

“Two-factor authentication is a requirement in this market (India). But it is actually quite an old concept. It was the best tool we had years ago. That technology is dated and is something on which we should not build our future on,” he said.