From September 01, 2015 all new debit and credit cards issued by banks shall be EMV chip and Pin based cards.

RBI/2014–15/589 DPSS (CO) PD No.2112/02.14.003/2014–15

May 07, 2015

Secu­ri­ty and Risk Mit­i­ga­tion Mea­sures for Card Present and Elec­tron­ic Pay­ment Transactions

A ref­er­ence is invit­ed to our cir­cu­lars DPSS.PD.CO.No.513 / 02.14.003 / 2011–2012 dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 22, 2011 and DPSS (CO) PD No.2377 / 02.14.003 / 2012–13 dat­ed June 24, 2013 on secu­ri­ty issues and risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures relat­ed to Card Present (CP) trans­ac­tions read along with cir­cu­lar dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 28, 2013 on secu­ri­ty and risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures for elec­tron­ic pay­ment trans­ac­tions where­in var­i­ous time­lines were indi­cat­ed for accom­plish­ment of tasks for secur­ing card and elec­tron­ic pay­ment transactions.

2. The Reserve Bank has adopt­ed a phased man­ner of imple­men­ta­tion of secu­ri­ty and risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures in card trans­ac­tions as evi­dent from the instruc­tions issued from time to time. The accep­tance infra­struc­ture is get­ting geared to accept EMV chip and pin cards. How­ev­er, in case of card issuance, while some banks have already moved to EMV chip and pin cards issuance, a large num­ber of banks con­tin­ue to issue Mag­net­ic stripe cards. Thus, giv­en the lev­el of readi­ness of the card accep­tance infra­struc­ture at point of sale and also the imple­men­ta­tion of PIN@POS for deb­it cards, the time is appro­pri­ate to move fur­ther along the path to migrate away from mag­net­ic stripe only cards to chip and pin cards.

3. Accord­ing­ly, banks are advised that with effect from Sep­tem­ber 01, 2015 all new cards issued – deb­it and cred­it, domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al – by banks shall be EMV chip and pin based cards.

4. The migra­tion plan for exist­ing mag­net­ic stripe only cards will be framed in con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers and time­line for the same will be advised in due course.

5. These guide­lines are issued under Sec­tion 18 read with Sec­tion 10(2) of the Pay­ment and Set­tle­ment Sys­tems Act, 2007 (Act 51 of 2007).