Smart card to enable metro travel, shopping

Urban Development Ministry has come out with a Smart National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) model to enable seamless travel by different metros and other transport systems across the country besides retail shopping and purchases.
While approving the inter-operable system for the entire country, Urban Development minister M Venkaiah Naidu has directed the Ministry officials to ensure time-bound and coordinated progress in this regard by various agencies to ensure early introduction of smart mobility cards.
Naidu has also sought coordination with the states for this initiative so that appropriate action for integration of other systems with the new smart card can be taken, according to a senior UD Ministry official.

Following the failure of an earlier effort to come out with such an inter-operable mobility card, Naidu had set up a committee last year under the chairmanship of UD Additional Secretary to recommend a card which is inter-operable across different transport systems in the country and which can also be used as a credit/debit card.
The committee had representatives of National Informatics Centre (NIC), Centre for Development of Advance Computing (C-DAC), Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI) and the Ministry of Finance.
After extensive study of various models being followed across the world, the committee has recommended the EMV Open Loop Card with stored value-based model and the same was approved by Naidu, the official said.