Why SBI, HDFC Bank, and ICICI bank account holders may face problems in receiving OTP

If you have an account in State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, then there is very important news for you, because in the coming days you may face problems in banking services.

Banks will be closed for 7 days from March 27 to April 4, but in the meantime, another worrying news is that you may face problems in online banking as well.

To get rid of unwanted and fraudulent SMSes, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has initiated a process to curb commercial messages, asking companies to register the SMS in a format with TRAI to reach customers.

The aim of this move is to send the right message to the customers and save them from being a victim of any fraud.

However, many companies are not taking this order of TRAI seriously, which their customers may have to bear the brunt.

TRAI has released a list of 40 such defaulting companies, which includes many big banks like HDFC Bank, SBI and ICICI Bank, Axis Bank.

All these companies (principal entities) are not following the regulatory rules of bulk commercial SMS even after TRAI's repeated warnings.

Seeing the companies not following its orders, TRAI has now started strict action on them. The regulator has issued a warning to all these defaulting companies that they must follow the order by April 1, 2021, if they don't want their customers to face problems in getting OTP.

TRAI has said that a lot of opportunities have been given to principal entities/telemarketers, and customers can no longer be kept away from the benefits they should get. Therefore, it has been decided that from April 1, 2021, if any message fails in the 'Scrubbing Process' due to not meeting the regulatory requirements, then it will be rejected from the system.

TRAI states that companies (Principal Entities), which include large banks like State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, etc., are not following the required parameters, such as Content Template IDs, PE IDs et cetera.

In such a situation, if the customers of these banks do any online transaction, then they will not get OTP, because, in the SMS scrubbing process, these banks will be rejected by the OTP message or any other important message system.

The purpose behind this is to stop OTP fraud and SMS. Telecom companies have started this process to implement this.

Every SMS content with a template registered in the DLT system will be delivered only after verification. This process is also called scrubbing.

Telecom companies were the first to ask banks and companies to register their templates.

Now if any company or organization does not follow the rules, their message will not reach the customers and it will be rejected. As such banks do not have online OTP, customers may have to face problems.