There is a new buzz in India’s fragmented virtual payment industry. Players across the board – top retail banks, technology companies, ATM manufacturers, point of Sale (POS) deployers, card network operators, and UPI players — are all sensing opportunities in rendering their offerings “contactless.”
Enhanced apprehension among consumers during pandemic towards physical modes of bills is giving upward thrust to a new class of virtual payments spends which can be ‘contactless’ in nature. Those bills are pushed predominantly with the aid of the usage of technologies along with tokenization, Near Field verbal Communication and Quick Response (QR) codes.
The shift toward contactless isn’t only a try to force adoption, but also to get rid of legacy challenges that had restricted growth along with high expenses of merchant acquisition and friction in payment reviews, leading stakeholders advised ET.
With coronavirus, there may be fear among purchasers to make card payments where there may be any form of physical interaction. The private lender says 70% of its 5 lakh PoS devices can process contactless transactions. The bank these days partnered with a credit card and Worldline to provide the capability of POS machines to smartphones of traders via a contactless technology known as Near Field Communication. (NFC).
As of June, at the same time as about 14-15% of total card-based total transactions in quantity are via contactless modes, approximately forty% of the 50 lakh PoS devices are stated to just accept contactless card payments, in line with specialists. Modern-day RBI data also indicates banks have moreover deployed 2.1 million Bharat QR codes for contactless payment acceptance as properly.
Meanwhile, metro tasks in Delhi, Bangalore, and Kochi are all learned to be piloting using NFC primarily based contactless card payments when the general public transit offerings open later within the 12 months. Those efforts to move towards contactless had been also expedited by way of the Reserve financial institution of India’s new guidelines that allow contactless card transactions below Rs 2000 to be accepted without any PIN authentication. Card network operators together with Visa and credit card in conjunction with leading banks are now trying to increase the restriction to Rs 5000 in a recent representation with the critical bank.
In the meantime, ATM operators too are sensing the possibility to realign strategies to make the cash withdrawal procedure contactless as well. Banks such as State Bank of India and Bank of India have been the early movers within the area by way of bringing OTP based withdrawal.
