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 M.Venkaiah Naidu has approved the ‘EMV Open Loop Card with stored value’ in this regard.
Background:
Following an unsuccessful effort in the past to come out with such an inter-operable mobility card, a committee was set up last year by the urban development ministry under the chairmanship of its additional secretary 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. The committee, after an extensive study of various models being followed across the world, has recommended the EMV Open Loop Card with stored value based model.
The 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.
Features of the NCMC Card:
- The card will do away with the need to carry separate cards for banking and transit requirements.
- It 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.
- The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will be involved in indigenous development and management of Clearing and Settlement of payments, Simulating Cards, Terminals and network, a support base of vendors for providing certified tools, cards, terminals and other services.
- The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will develop the standards and hardware for Metro gates/validators along with related ecosystems.
- Certification and authentication mechanism will be developed by NPCI or any other government agency.
- In this regard funding of 47 crore rupees has been approved by the ministry.