You may not have been asked to authenticate your payment when making a purchase online in the past, however, new legislation has meant that card providers and online businesses are now required to be 3D Secure 2.0 (also known as 3DS2) compliant – in order to make online shopping and purchases safer for customers.
Going forward, when you make a purchase or payment online, your card provider will determine whether additional authentication is required – and will prompt you to verify your payment via a second means (known as ‘two factor authentication’). The authentication method varies between card providers, but this could be a code sent to your mobile phone, which you need to enter to complete your payment, or a prompt on your mobile banking app.