Your card is now safer than earlier from frauds

Have you ever had a fraud done in your Card ? Did you feel, you should have more control over your card transactions ? Did you know, someone could take funds out of your card kept in your wallet, without you knowing ?

Yes, sometimes back cards came with a wifi feature , where you don't have to give any pin to validate a transaction. So you just show the card and the transaction was authorized. That feature was called a Contactless transaction. So the card was wifi enabled and the card reader would read your card data your wifi and then present the transaction to your bank, which then would validate, if your card was enabled for such feature. If enabled, the payment would be approved.

Unfortunately many did not even know about this. So if they were keeping the card in the wallet and wallet in their back pocket, someone could take funds by just showing the card reader in the back and take money out of it. Many people fell in trap of it.

And you must be knowing about online frauds. By default, all cards were also coming enabled with Online transactions. So it was easy for fraudsters to trap , if they got the card data by some means. By the time you realize, funds would have already gone, and you will have to dispute them, fight with your bank, show proof etc.

Starting October 1, all banks have now disabled all transactions except ATM / Point of Sale transactions by default. This is a big respite against fraud. Though this sounds pretty simple and straight, it was not easy to implement this feature. Because banks had also give an option to it's user to enable them along with limits. So they had to enhance their applications and it's live since October 1. And the best part is that, you can manage the limits as well.

So you will have to log in to your bank's application and enable them along with setting the limits. And very importantly you will have to enable online transactions for Wallet Recharges, Utility Bill Payments and Standing Instructions to work. So please make sure, you do that, if you have a standing instruction to pay your card bills, else it will fail and you will be charged a penalty.

Here is the link to Reserve Bank of India's Notification. Though as per the original notification, this was to implement by March 16, I only got notified on October 1st by all the banks whom card I am using. And by the way I see, as per the RBI notice, this circular are not mandatory for prepaid gift cards and those used at mass transit systems.