India’s private sector lender ICICI Bank is set to launch NFC-enabled debit and credit cards next month to allow faster payment transaction.
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NFC or contactless cards, which do not require any pin code for confirmation, will allow payments by waving a card in front of a scanner instead of swiping through a card reader.
Although to abide by the Reserve Bank of India’s present guidelines, that require all cards transactions to be authenticated by punching a pin, ICICI Bank’s NFC cards need to be authenticated with PIN which may hinder the purpose of time saving using those cards, reports Times of India.
The new cards will tie up with both Visa and MasterCard for their respective products payWave and Paypass. The bank will launch these cards in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad and has already tied up with 200 merchants.
Rajiv Sabharwal, executive director at ICICI Bank, while speaking to Times of India, said: "The key advantage is that, this card can ensure the transaction gets completed in one tenth the time taken by an existing credit card.
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By GlobalData"Also since the card need not leave the customer’s hand, the level of security is higher. There is a strong pull for this kind of a product from the merchant side as they can service many more customers in the same time. Given our distribution capabilities we expect to make a big difference."
