RBI’s new guidelines for credit cards, debit cards: Steps to tokenise your card data

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in June, extended till September 30 the deadline to replace the credit card and debit card data used in online, point-of-sale, and in-app transactions with unique tokens. The new debit and credit card guidelines were scheduled to come into effect from July 1.

According to the RBI, the tokenisation system will improve the payment experience for cardholders by making it safer and more convenient. Under this facility, customers’ card details will be stored as an ‘encrypted’ token to ease the transaction process for them.

What is ‘tokensiation’?

The country’s central bank describes tokenisation as ‘the replacement of actual card details with an alternate code called the ‘token’, which shall be unique for a combination of card, token requestor and device’.

Here, the ‘requestor’ is the entity which accepts a request from the customer to tokenise their card, and then passes it on to the card network to issue a corresponding token.

Steps to generate the tokens

(1.) To make a purchase followed by payment for the item(s), go to any e-commerce merchant website or application.

(2.) Choose your card and enter its details, along with additional information while checking out.

(3.) Secure your card and tokenise it per RBI guidelines. For this, go to the ‘secure your card as per RBI guidelines’ option.

(4.) Authorise the token’s creation. To complete the transaction, use the one-time password (OTP) sent by your bank on your mobile phone or email.

(5.) Create your token. The data of your card is now replaced with this token.

(6.) To help you recognise your card while making a transaction, the last four digits of your saved card are displayed when you revisit the same website or application. This means that your card has been tokenised.

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