BHUBANESWAR: Tap to pay — a contactless payment technology that enables transactions with a mere tap on the payment device rather than with the swipe of a card — isn’t just a cool fad, but clearly a wave of the future.
More and more banks have queued up to roll out contactless debit and credit cards to meet the Reserve Bank’s deadline of December 2018. Experts say contactless payment fraud does happen, but is quite rare.
But what’s a little-known fact is that NFC (near-field communication)-enabled payments already work on a majority of card machines.
Most retailers now have point-of-sale (PoS) devices that support NFC payments, but they generally don’t know how to use it. While the overall number of these payments remains low, the deployers of PoS machines say they were seeing a 10-15 per cent month-on-month rise in NFC payments.For starters, if you have recently applied for a card, chances are that your card supports NFC. Just look out for the NFC icon on the back.
How does it work
NFC is simply a contactless transaction that allows short-range data transfer without the need to touch the PoS device. You may have already used Paytm tap cards. Similarly, these cards also come with NFC chip — a small circuit, which wirelessly transmits the data to the payment gateway terminal without the need to be swiped or inserted.
You will need either a credit or debit card that supports NFC or a payment app like Samsung Pay, as also a phone that supports NFC payments. If you don’t have an NFC-enabled card, you can call the bank and always ask for a replacement, because the new cards being issued can be made NFC- enabled or contactless.
For Samsung Pay users, you can simply wave your phone near the card terminal, which will ask you to ‘remove card’ immediately after. That’s it. Payment is done.Notably, you’re probably used to waving your phone before punching in the amount on PoS devices. This works because Samsung Pay imitates magnetic swipe cards, which other payment apps can’t do. This is just as secure as NFC, but you usually need to punch in your PIN.
However, if you first select the ‘sale’ option in the device, which is usually the first option, and then pay with NFC after punching in the amount in the PoS machine, you won’t need to punch in your PIN.
Give it a try next time you visit a departmental store.