Visa Card

In what will (and already has) prove to be a short in the arm for Indian Government’s aggressive digital payments push, Visa has announced that it has now issued over 20 Million contact less cards in India. Continuing its push for contactless payments in India, Visa also revealed that the acceptance infrastructure for such cards has crossed one million terminals[2] across the country.

The Indian Government’s push towards digital payments was further strengthened with a directive in July 2018 to consider adding NFC (contactless) capabilities, in addition to the EMV chip feature, for all cards being upgraded as part of the RBI mandate to replace all existing magstripe cards by December 2018. According to Reserve Bank data, over 3.3 million merchants in India now accept cashless payments through multiple payment options.

Talking about crossing the 20 million milestone, TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager for Visa in India & South Asia said,

With 20 million contactless cards powered by Visa today in India, we have reached critical mass, adding to the building blocks of the cashless payments infrastructure of the country. Thanks to the Government’s push towards enabling contactless payments, we expect this number to significantly increase in the months to come.

The tech, though introduced to Indians in early 2015, has gained up massive traction in past 3 years — one of the fast adoptions in terms of new tech. 

For debit transactions up to INR 2,000, Visa contactless cardholders can just tap to pay, without having to enter a PIN or sign transaction receipts. Visa contactless payment cards have an embedded antenna and microchip, enabling “contactless” communication with a card reader at checkout. Cardholders can simply tap or wave the card over a secure reader. The transaction is then processed through Visa’s global, secure network, VisaNet, which processes all Visa transactions.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.