ICICI Bank has launched India’s first ‘contactless’ or ‘tap and pay’ facility on debit and credit cards to enable electronic payments with a mere tap.

These cards will enable electronic payments by just tapping or waving the cards near the merchant terminal in lieu of dipping or swiping them.

The contactless payment facility is based on the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which provides customers the convenience of speed as these cards require significantly less time than traditional cards to complete a transaction along with enhanced security as they remain in control of the customer, ICICI Bank said in a statement.

Also, with the RBI looking at easing the two-factor authentication requirement for small value transactions up to ₹3,000, the transaction processing will be complete in less than a minute.

At present, the ‘Coral Contactless Credit Card’ and ‘Expressions Wave Debit Card’ of ICICI Bank are powered to provide the facility. These cards can also be used for swiping as regular cards. The bank has introduced these cards in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Mumbai to begin with. Over 1,200 EDC machines capable of accepting contactless payments have been set-up across select merchants in these cities. The merchants include quick service restaurants, coffee shops, shopping marts and fuel stations.

Game changer

Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director, ICICI Bank, said, “We expect this to be a big game changer in the payment industry. The key advantages of these cards are speed and security…It will herald a shift from low value cash payments to cards thereby bringing payments in quick service restaurants and shopping marts too under the formal channel.”

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