Don't have mobile banking? Online card payments will be complicated

Have you received an SMS or email from your bank in recent days that it is introducing a new way to verify online card payments? If not, it will be waiting for you soon anyway. The financial institutions were ordered to introduce from 1 January 2021 at least two-factor verification of card payments on the Internet. The classic copying of the code from the SMS message is no longer considered safe enough. If you are a mobile banking user through a bank application, nothing much has changed for you. But if you have an older phone, or simply refuse to use mobile banking, Online card payments will be a slightly more difficult discipline for you from January 2021.

The mobile application from the bank has the advantage of being a trusted authority for the execution of the transaction. With it, payments will still be very easy. But if you don’t have it and don’t want to have it, count on it You will need to start using one of the three new features. New if your bank has not introduced them before. SMS confirmation must be accompanied by either an ePIN, biometric authentication (such as a fingerprint) or a mobile key. These are elements that are much more difficult to misuse. Due to the current pandemic situation and the “lockdown” of mobile banking users, it is still increasing. An estimated two million clients of Czech banks do not yet have it.

Owners of older phones or opponents of mobile banking have to reckon with the fact that they will be part of online card payments from 2021 not only enter the password from the SMS, but also use other of the listed elements. This also applies to bank clients that do not have mobile banking at all. These include, for example, Sberbank, which has already introduced a static PIN, which the client must remember and enter together with a one-time code. If you still haven’t received information about this news from your bank, it should happen very soon. Experts and themselves banks advise you to use their applications and made mobile banking easier and more secure.