Commercial banks must impose cap on global card transactions: RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked commercial banks to impose monetary limit for international transactions on credit and debit cards in order to check frauds and also refrain from issuing cards with global access unless specifically sought by the customer.

In a notification, the RBI stated that a monetary limit of $500 be imposed by issuing bank on all global cards which have not been used in the past.  "All the active magstripe international cards issued by banks should have threshold limit for international usage. Thethreshold should be determined by the banks based on the risk profile of the customer and accepted by the customer by June 30," the notification said.

Till the time of completion of the process a threshold limit not exceeding $500 may be put in place for all debit cards and all credit cards that have not been used for international transactions in the past, it added.

The notification comes in the wake of cyber attacks, which as per the RBI has become "more unpredictable and electronic payment systems becoming vulnerable to new types of misuse, it is imperative that banks introduce certain minimum checks and balances to minimise the impact of such attacks and to arrest or minimise the damage."