Govt comes out with Smart Mobility Card for travel across India
By TIOL News Service
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NEW DELHI, SEPT 01, 2015: THE Ministry of Urban Development has come out with a Smart National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) model to enable seamless travel by different metros and other transport systems across the country besides retail shopping and purchases. Minister of Urban Development Mr M.Venkaiah Naidu has approved the ‘EMV Open Loop Card with stored value' in this regard.
Following the failure of an earlier effort to come out with such an inter-operable mobility card, Mr Venkaiah Naidu set up a Committee last year under the chairmanship of Additional Secretary(UD) to recommend a card which is inter-operable across different transport systems in the country and which can also be used as a credit/debit card. This Committee had representatives of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI) and the Ministry of Finance.
After extensive study of various models being followed across the world, the Committee has recommended the EMV Open Loop Card with stored value based model and the same was approved by Mr Venkaiah Naidu.
This Smart Common Mobility Payment Card addresses the deficiencies associated with other cards being used in Singapore and other countries. This card meets travel needs based on stored value of money and can be used for travelling by any means of transport and also enables account based retail applications. Accordingly, this card does away with the need for carrying separate cards for banking and transit requirements.
Some of the other models examined include Closed Loop Solution like the Octopus cards in Hong Kong which are limited to using for travel only. The other model of EMV Open Loop Account based model suffers from the limitations of not supporting weekly, monthly, student passes etc., and not facilitating checking for ticketless travel, collection of fines etc., besides increased costs of robust backend systems required for operation.
Globally, there is no nationwide common card except in Singapore where in inter-operability is confined to city only. The Committee, hence, recommended EMV Open Loop Card with stored value for use across the country.
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