New Delhi, 17 October 2019: SBI Card, one of the country`s leading credit card issuers, today announced the launch of ‘SBI Card Pay’, a payment feature based on Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology for faster, convenient and more secure card payments using mobile phones. Using SBI Card Pay, customers can make contactless payments at Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled point of sale terminals with just one tap of their mobiles, without using the physical credit card or entering any PIN. As a first of its kind payment solution in India, it is built as part of the SBI Card mobile app providing ease to customers to use just one app to manage their credit card account as well as make contactless payments. SBI Card Pay will allow customers to set desired per transaction and daily transaction limits. Currently, other HCE enabled apps allow per transaction limit of up to INR 2000 and daily transaction limit of up to INR 10,000, restricting the effective usage of this feature.
To use SBI Card Pay, cardholders have to do a one-time registration of their card on the latest version of the SBI Card mobile app. Once the card is registered, users can complete payments simply by unlocking their phone screen and bringing the mobile device near the point of sale terminal. This facility has been launched on VISA platform and will function on any Android smartphone with Android OS KitKat version 4.4 and above.
Commenting on the launch of SBI Card Pay, Mr. Hardayal Prasad, MD & CEO, SBI Card said, “SBI Card Pay is aimed at redefining the payments experience for our customers. Using cutting-edge technologies such as HCE, we want to provide seamless yet swift payments at a speed that matches dynamic lifestyle of today’s consumers. We believe that contactless payments are playing a key role in country’s digital payments drive and as the supporting infrastructure increases countrywide, adoption is bound to accelerate significantly.”
Sharing his views on the launch, T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager India & South Asia, Visa said, “We are proud to partner SBI Card in enabling Visa cards for tap to pay transactions using the SBI Card mobile app, a first of its kind in India. The ease, security and convenience of just tapping a mobile phone to pay, addresses the needs of millions of Indian consumers. Global trends indicate that the proliferation of contactless payments significantly increases card usage and replaces cash transactions thus complementing our country’s efforts to move millions of citizens into the digital economy. We are confident of SBI Card and Visa jointly being able to bring about this transformation in India too.”
SBI Card Pay is a highly secure platform as it uses tokenisation which converts customer’s sensitive card information (Card Number, Expiry Date, CVV etc.) into a device specific digital token. Since the card information transmitted wirelessly by NFC is protected through tokenisation, the customer’s physical card information is never exposed to the merchant, making the transaction completely secure. Additionally, to make payments customers must set a device lock on their phones. Payments will go through only when customers unlock their phone screens using fingerprint/screen lock or MPIN. Even in case of loss of mobile phone, card information stored in form of digital tokens cannot be accessed by any third party. Customers simply have to inform the SBI Card customer service to block the digital token and can continue using their physical plastic cards.
