National Common Mobility Card: Know all about, needs, features and benefits

The National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) is an inter-Operable transport Card conceived by the Ministry of  Housing and Urban Affairs  (MoHUA) of the Government of India. It was launched on 4th March 2019. The single transport card enables the user to pay for travel, toll duties (toll tax), retail shopping, and withdraw money.

These are bank-issued cards on the Debit/Credit /Prepaid Card product platform. The customer may use the single card for payments across all segments including metro, bus, suburban railways, toll, parking, smart city, and retail. The stored value on the card supports offline transactions across all travel needs with minimal financial risk to involved stakeholders. The service area feature of this card supports operator-specific applications e.g. monthly passes season tickets etc.

Need for NCMC 

Public Transport is extensively used across India as the economical and convenient mode of commuting for all classes of society. Cash continues to be the most preferred mode of fare payments across public transport. However, there are multiple challenges associated with the cash payment e.g.cash handling, revenue leakages, cash reconciliation etc. Various initiatives have been taken by transit operators to automate & digitize the fare collection using the Automatic Fare Collection System (AFC). The introduction of closed-loop cards issued by these operators helped to digitize the fare collection to a significant extent. However, the restricted usability of these payment instruments limits their digital adoption by customers.

AFC System (gates, readers /validators, infrastructure etc.) is the core of any transit operator to automate the fare collection process. The major challenge associated with AFC system implementation in India till now is the lack of indigenous solution providers. Till now, the AFC system deployed at various Metros is from foreign players. In order to avoid the vendor lock-in and create an interoperable system, there was a need to develop indigenous standards and an AFC system under the Make in India initiative.

In order to ensure a seamless journey across metros and other transport systems in addition to retail shopping and purchases, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) came out with this National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) Program.

Benefits of NCMC

NCMC Ecosystem offers a value proposition for customers as they need not carry multiple cards for different usage. Further, the super quick contactless transactions will improve the seamless experience. For operators, the NCMC ecosystem brings common standards for implementation without vendor lock-in.

This will also help in higher digital payments penetration saving on closed-loop card lifecycle management costs and reducing operating costs. The rich data insights may be used by operators for business intelligence leading to efficient operation.

With NCMC Ecosystem, Banks will get access to segments that are highly driven by case but stickiness in nature. NCMC Ecosystem will further help the government in digitization of low-value payments and reduced costs for the entire ecosystem.