Visa crosses 20 million contactless cards in India

Bhubaneswar, Dec 12: Visa (NYSE:V), the global leader in payments technology, on Wednesday claimed that over 20 million  Visa contactless cards have now been issued in India, since the launch of its first contactless card in 2015.

Continuing its push for contactless payments in India, Visa also revealed that the acceptance infrastructure for such cards has crossed one million terminals  across the country.

“In a little over three years, along with our clients, we have been able to promote the benefits of contactless cards to over 20 million consumers across India. Besides the significant push in building awareness, we have helped expand India’s contactless acceptance infrastructure to over one million points. Across the world, contactless cards have proven to be a significant catalyst in improving consumer stickiness for digital payments and we expect India to be amongst its biggest adopters in months to come,” said TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager for Visa in India & South Asia.

Notably, over 3.3 million merchants in India now accept cashless payments through multiple payment options. Contactless card payments help realize the government’s vision of Digital India, of which digital payments is a prime focus area.

The government’s push towards digital payments was further strengthened with a directive in July 2018 to consider adding NFC (contactless) capabilities, in addition to the EMV chip feature, for all cards being upgraded as part of the RBI mandate to replace all existing magstripe cards by December 2018.

Contactless cards make the payment experience smooth, considerably shortening checkout time from close to a minute to just a few seconds. Consumers get the convenience of simply tapping and paying for transactions, whether at large retail outlets, the neighbourhood grocery or their favourite cinema.

“With 20 million contactless cards powered by Visa today in India, we have reached critical mass, adding to the building blocksof the cashless payments infrastructure of the country. Thanks to the government’s push towards enabling contactless payments, we expect this number to significantly increase in the months to come,” adds Ramachandran.

Globally, over 1.5 billion contactless payment cards are expected to be issuedby the end of 2018 and will account for 50% of all payment cards shipped .