Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) - The central bank of Bangladesh has introduced a contactless payment service using the near-field communication (NFC) technology to make card-based transactions faster and easier.
Under the new mechanism, all the scheduled bankers will now be allowed to conduct such transactions using ‘EMVCo-Compliant’ credit cards.
Currently, more than 0.9 million credit cards are in use. Of them, over 0.6 million are EMV-compliant, according to the maker insiders.
EMV—which stands for Europay, Mastercard and Visa—is a global system of payment through cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions.
The maximum limit for the transactions has been fixed at Tk 3,000, according to a notification issued by the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank, on Thursday.
Talking to the BBN, a BB senior official said the transactions will be made without any personal identification number (PIN).
The banks concerned would have to notify their clients about each transaction immediately through the short message service (SMS), the central banker explained.
“We expect that such a payment system will help popularise card-based payment among people,” he added.
The NFC is a set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices, one of which is usually a portable device such as a smart phone, to establish communication by bringing them within 4.0 cm of each other.
BBN/SSR/AD