ICICI Bank has unveiled the country’s first contactless mobile payment solution to enable its credit and debit customers make in-store contactless payments by just waving their smartphones near an NFC-enabled merchant terminal. The mobile payment solution available in the Bank’s ‘Pockets’ app, provides improved convenience of ‘Touch & Pay’ as customers are no longer required to carry physical card or cash to pay in stores.
ICICI Bank is the first financial institution in the country to leverage the Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology to bring forth this solution. The HCE technology creates ‘virtual’ cards for ‘physical’ credit or debit cards (Visa/MasterCard) of the Bank, as selected by the customer. The virtual card resides in the Bank’s secure cloud server. Using the virtual cards, an ICICI Bank customer can initiate electronic payments from NFC enabled smartphones by just waving his/her phone near a contactless merchant terminal. While the virtual card bears a different card number, the credit limit and expiry date remains same as the original physical card.
The solution offers enhanced security as the customer’s card details are stored virtually in the Bank’s secure cloud server and not on the customer’s mobile phone. Additionally, the display of the card on the smartphone shows only last four digits of the virtual card. Thus, even if a customer loses his/her mobile phone, he/she will not lose any confidential information about his/her original and virtual card. Further, for each payment via the virtual card, a one-time unique token number is created by the Bank’s server, which is encrypted and sent to the merchant’s terminal, without disclosing any information of the card.
| Company Name | CMP |
|---|---|
| HDFC Bank | 799.90 |
| ICICI Bank | 1347.50 |
| Axis Bank | 1359.15 |
| Kotak Mahindra Bank | 383.50 |
| Indusind Bank | 853.15 |
| View more.. | |
MoneyWorks4Me is a SEBI-registered Investment Adviser (IA) dedicated to helping investors build long-term wealth through transparent, research-driven, conflict-free guidance. Founded in 2008, we started our journey as a Research Analyst (RA), providing deep fundamental analysis, intrinsic value insights, and long-term investing frameworks for Indian equities. In 2017, we transitioned to a full-fledged SEBI-registered Investment Adviser, strengthening our commitment to acting as a fiduciary—always putting the investor’s interest first.
To become India’s most trusted, research-powered fiduciary advisory platform—where every investor, regardless of experience, can make calm, confident, and well-reasoned investment decisions.
MoneyWorks4Me ensures this through: