Digital Payment should not overlook privacy and customer security: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Member of parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar has written to finance minister Arun Jaitley and RBI governor Urjit Patel apprising them not to overlook privacy and customer security during digital payment. 

In his letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, Rajeev Chandrasekhar has sought finance minister’s attention to 5 key issues: Use of Jan Dhan accounts; use of Aadhaar in banking and financial system; planning for issues of transaction fraud, data security and privacy; growing Internet infrastructure and access to digital payment hotspots; and planning for anticipated surge in digital black economy.  

Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, "RBI must clearly and without ambiguity define Jan Dhan accounts in terms of their restrictive functionality in precise terms to banks that are opening and operating them so that Jan Dhan accounts are ringfenced from the other banking system.”

"The numerous fake Aadhaar entries in the Aadhaar database, including the recent Pakistani spies who had Aadhar cards issued in fake names with their biometrics shows that the Aadhar database is a very poorly verified database in terms of identifying the person whose biometrics are in the database. I am sure that the government and RBI is aware of this point as well. The RBI must ensure Aadhaar can and must be used only along with other proof of ID for people to enter the financial system," said Chandrasekhar. 

“As we move large parts of our economy and transactions online, there will legitimate issues of transaction fraud, data security, privacy and disputes between consumers and banks, banks and banks, merchants and consumers, merchants and banks etc. that will explode in volume. The data security issue in itself represents a serious challenge to our banking system and the RBI must work with the government to plan pro-actively on issues of infrastructure, capacity building and legislative requirements to deter and prosecute the perpetrators,” commented Chandrasekhar. 

"Internet coverage and access is still not available to almost 900 million Indians, there is talk of use of USSD to serve those that are not connected to the Internet. The real solution is to create Internet hotspots all around the country and the infrastructure to take the Internet there. I would suggest that finance ministry and department of telecommunications work closely to create a more focused investment and rollout strategy of the public networks and private networks using the USO funds and other incentives,” said Chandrasekhar. 

“There are already reports of a surge in domestic bitcoin trade and move of black economy to the dark Internet. The surveillance and policing requirements are challenging and I suspect the government and RBI are ill-equipped currently to deal with this. I am drawing your attention to the need to be ahead of the curve on this rather than behind and so the RBI must develop the capabilities on this urgently,”  added Chandrasekhar.