Visa has unveiled its specifications to support the rollout of the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) as conceived by the ministry of housing and urban affairs of the government of India. NCMC, also known as ‘One Nation, One Card’, is an interoperable transport card that can be used for payments across all transit segments including metro, bus, suburban railways, toll, parking, smart city and retail. Visa’s group country manager, India and South Asia T.R. Ramachandran, said in India, consumers have continued to prefer cash to digital payments for low value-high frequency transactions such as transit. With the transit sector expected to expand with numerous upcoming metro and smart city projects, NCMC contactless cards will trigger rapid adoption of digital payments across transit use cases. Besides being cost effective vis-à-vis cash, it will also help improve the efficiency and scale of public transit systems in the country, he added. Visa NCMC cards will allow for the contactless feature of tapping to pay, that provides a card balance for offline usage at transit venues; it allows cardholders to store their transit passes on the card, provides multiple ways to top-up the offline balance on the card and it can be accepted at participating public transport operators (PTOs) across the country.
