SBI Cards Ready In All Networks For Card Tokenisation Ahead Of RBI's Deadline

Amara told PTI, "In terms of our preparation, readiness wise, technology-wise, integration with all the networks, we are ready with all the networks like Visa, Mastercard, and RuPay."

He further said, "I think the universe of large merchants which accounts for a major share of the spend, they have already been tokenized. It is smaller merchants who are doing it now (are in the process)."

According to him, card tokenisation is a very good measure in terms of protecting the consumer interest and ensuring against any data leakage.

Currently, many entities including merchants, involved in an online card transaction chain store card data like card number, expiry date, etc. citing cardholder convenience and comfort for undertaking transactions in the future. Although, this practice does bring in convenience and availability of card details with multiple entities, however, it is also a risker as card data can be misused or stolen.

Also, there have been occasions where card data stored by merchants or other entities have been comprised.

As per RBI, within India as well, social engineering techniques can be employed to perpetrate fraud using such data.

Thereby, last year, RBI made it mandatory for entities other than card networks and card issuers to not store debit or credit card data with them.

The deadline for tokenisation of debit and credit cards is till September 30, 2022. That said, RBI's tokenisation norms will take force from October 1, 2022.

SBI Cards has also launched a new credit card targeted specifically toward cashback rewards. This card comes without any cost till March 2023. However, starting next fiscal, there will be an annual fee of ₹999 levied but can be completely waived if a customer crosses the spend threshold of ₹2 lakh per annum.

On the industry demand and consumer spend behavior, SBI Cards CEO stated that the volumes of the industry is robust for the last five months. It had crossed ₹1 trillion mark in July --- which is a new norm for the industry --- on account of a strong revival in discretionary spend, particularly in segments that were a little subdued coupled with a strong comeback from domestic travel and hospitality.