Cards never used for online transactions will be disabled: RBI
In a major move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks and card issuers to disable online payment facility on all credit/debit cards that have never been used for an online transaction or contactless payment. The notification from the central bank comes as part of an effort to make card transactions more secure and convenient for users. Here's all about it.
Order to disable online payment services on credit/debit cards
According to RBI's recent notification, if a cardholder has never used their credit/debit card internationally or for online transactions, contact payments, they would lose the ability to use these features very soon. The banks and card issuers will disable the services, and the owner would have to apply again to avail them - when and if needed.
Card issuers asked to give transaction rights according to risk-assessment
In the same notification, RBI has asked card issuers to assess the security risk associated with every cardholder to determine if they should be given online (domestic/international), offline/point of contact-based (international), and contactless transaction rights on their existing card. However, it was not immediately clear how exactly the banks and issuers will determine the risk to make this decision.
New cards will not have online transaction features
As for the newly-issued or re-issued cards (physical or virtual), RBI has said that they won't have the ability to transact online by default. The cards would only have the feature to make payment at contact-based points of usage such as ATMs and Point of Sale (PoS) devices within India. Online transactions and other facilities would be enabled only after a specific request.
Directive will go into effect in March 2020
RBI's directive will come into effect starting March 16, 2020, which is almost two months from now. If you have never used your card for online transactions before, we'd recommend doing it at least a few times so that the facility to transact online is not disabled and you don't have to go through the procedure of enabling it again.
