ixigo wants to let users pay for travel bookings purely by voice, sidestepping the usual authentication requirements. This plan directly challenges the RBI's 2FA rules, which demand a human actively authenticates each digital payment. Solving for liability and audit trails on voice transactions becomes a complex engineering and regulatory problem for their product teams.
How We Got Here
The Reserve Bank of India's 2025 Authentication Mechanisms Directions require two distinct factors for every domestic digital payment, with one dynamic. ixigo Group CEO Aloke Bajpai told Mint that technology for voice payments is simple; the safeguards prove the actual difficulty.
The Numbers
- RBI rules allow non-card-present transactions to use a "capable of being proven" factor, like a voiceprint, instead of an OTP.
- A simpler route involves a human still supplying the OTP, as MediaNama's Nikhil Pahwa noted, making it agent-assisted.
- Current exceptions to 2FA include small-value contactless card transactions and recurring e-mandates up to Rs 15,000 after the first payment.
- The Digital Payments E-Mandate Framework, 2026, still requires one human AFA to register the mandate and another for the first payment.
- Unresolved questions include verifiable record capture, proof of consent, and who bears liability for accidental voice charges.
What Happens Next
🇮🇳 Why This Matters for India
For fintech product managers and developers in Bangalore building voice-first interfaces, the RBI's stance defines the immediate boundaries of payment innovation.
The Take
The real bottleneck for ixigo here isn't voice recognition tech; it's the RBI's fundamental assumption that human intent must be explicitly demonstrable for every financial transaction. Expect other traveltech and fintech players to wait for an RBI sandbox or clear guidance before committing resources to this specific user flow.
Source:
MediaNama ↗