Banking and payments services disrupted due to new SMS rules March 9, 2021 Banking and payment services across the country were disrupted from Monday onward as telecom companies began to “scrub” SMS messages that were not registered with a blockchain system maintained by telcos. The new system which went live on Sunday midnight, was designed to block fraudulent SMS messages but in the interim has interrupted regular financial services. From Sunday onward, telcos started enforcing the Telecom Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, as required by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), even though many merchants and payments companies didn’t register their SMS formats in time. This led to to one-time-passwords (OTPs) and other important transactional messages getting blocked from delivery.