National Common Mobility Card: is it revolutionary or just a fad?
How it works NCMCs are issued as prepaid and debit Rupay cards and will soon be issued as credit cards as well. A prepaid card can be bought from metro stations by completing online KYC at the issuing bank’s platform. Debit cards, on the other hand, are issued by the bank.
The NCMC debit card, however, functions like a prepaid card for offline transit payments at metros, railways, buses and can be used to parking fees. The card has an offline wallet wherein money can be loaded and then be used for offline transit payments. “Metro payments are offline transactions, which means there is no instant connectivity to servers to check whether you have enough balance in the bank account.
The card has a chip that acts like a purse which needs to be loaded for making transactions," said Gandhi. Essentially, instead of getting a separate prepaid transit card, you can just get a Rupay NCMC debit card that can be used for transit payments as well. The NCMC debit card can be recharged or loaded from the bank account directly.
In case of payment failures, the cardholder, both for prepaid and debit cards, has to contact the issuing bank for resolution. The metro staff at the station doesn’t offer support in this regard. Challenges galore Currently, prepaid cards are more widely used compared to debit cards.
In all major cities, different banks have launched prepaid NCMCs (see graphic) in collaboration with the metro corporations, which can be used across different cities. However, when a cardholder moves to a new city, they may have to relink their card to the new city’s metro corporation if the card’s issuing bank is different from the lender that has tied up with the Metro corporation. Most prepaid cards come with a maximum loading
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