The new RBI rules will come into effect from March 16, 2020 (Monday). These rules will help in curbing the misuse of debit and credit cards. These rules will apply to all debit-credit cards (physical and virtual). However, these new rules will not apply to prepaid gift cards and metro cards.

According to the new rules when issuing / re-issuing debit-credit cards RBI has asked banks to activate debit / credit cards for transactions only at ATMs and Point of Sale (POS) terminals in India. If customers want to do online transactions, contactless transactions, or international transactions, then these services have to be commissioned to avail of these services i.e card holders will have to activate these services

The Reserve Bank has asked all banks to provide mobile banking, net banking option, interactive voice response (IVR) round the clock to enable modification of limits within their overall card limit for any type of transactions including domestic and international transactions, transactions at ATMs and at PoS machines, online transactions and contactless transactions.This would be in addition to the requests that can be made at the branch.

According to the old rules, these services used to come automatically with the card, but now it will start at the request of the customer. If you are a debit-credit card customer and you have not yet done any online transaction, contactless transaction, or international transaction with your card, then these services on the card will automatically stop from March 16.