Back in September, Bank Negara Malaysia asked local financial institutions to move away from using OTP SMS, among other security improvements. These were primarily targeted at banks, but it looks like Touch n’ Go Digital is also implementing improvements of its own to the company’s eWallet which are mostly in line with these imposed demands.
In general Touch n’ Go eWallet says that it will be implementing five key changes. One is that it will be moving away from using OTP SMS “to a more secure authentication method”. While it won’t be completely going away, the alternative will be the use of facial authentication, which is oddly specific as biometric authenticatios go. Other methods of authentications are also in the works, but the company did not share more details on that front. The company also claims that it will be more stringent with its fraud detection rules, as well as its blocking of suspicious transactions.
Next, the Touch n’ Go eWallet will also be implementing a verification and cooling-off period for new sign-ups. Authentications of online transactions will also be restricted to only a single device for every account holder. And finally, Touch n’ Go Digital will be setting up a dedicated customer service hotline to deal with scam and fraud.
Overall, all these changes sound very familiar, especially if you’ve been following the mandates by Bank Negara Malaysia. Local banks have already announced that they will implement changes, but notably this is only mandatory for banks, and not ewallets.
Touch n’ Go Digital also claims that its eWallet will be the first, if not only, among locally available ewallets to implement these changes. While banks need to do so by June of 2023, Touch n’ Go Digital claims that all this changes will come to the eWallet by March of next year.
