Starting October 1, new guidelines meant to secure credit and debit card payments came into effect, leaving several cardholders in a fix on Thursday as many of them were not able to make online or contactless transactions. The reason for such instances, industry insiders pointed out, was due to non-compliance of new credit and debit card guidelines.
In an attempt to make digital payments using debit cards and credit cards more secure, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had issued several new guidelines.
The norms mandated an online consent from customers, whose cards had never been used to make online or contactless payments to be able to make such transactions from October 1 onwards. What this meant is that a customer cannot use their card for online transactions, if they haven’t done so before on that card. To enable online transactions, they will now have to approach the bank.
Another important change that came into effect on Thursday was that no services will be available by default on debit and credit cards. So, if cardholders need online transactions, contactless payments, international transactions – they will have to approach the bank and request it to enable these services on their cards.
RBI has asked banks to offer a 24x7 facility for cardholders to make necessary modifications on their banking apps, on net banking and at ATMs. These services will also be available at bank branches.
According to the new guidelines, card users will now be able to register preferences. They can ‘switch on’ of ‘switch off’ their debit and credit cards, set spend limits for international transactions, online transactions as well as contactless card transactions. They can even opt out of certain features like ATM transactions.
Banks can also deactivate current cards and reissue them based on risk perception.
The central bank has asked all banks and other card-issuing companies to disable online payment services of all debit and credit cards that have never been used for online or contactless transactions both in India and internationally.
If the cardholder wants to use the credit or debit card outside India, then they need to ask the bank to enable international transactions.
With IANS inputs