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The Centre has officially notified 11 international ports, nine land ports, including Attari on the India-Pakistan border, and two airports, allowing e-visa holders to enter India, a government statement released on Monday said. With the addition of these new ports, the total number of international ports where e-visa holders can enter has risen to 88. This includes 37 airports, 38 seaports, and 13 land ports, aimed at making the e-visa facility more accessible and beneficial for international travellers. The newly added land ports are Darranga, Gede, Ghojadanga, Haridaspur, Jaigaon, Dawki, Moreh, and Attari (Road), along with the airports in Bhopal and Tirupati. International travellers holding a Pakistani passport or of Pakistani origin must apply for a regular visa at an Indian Mission, as the e-visa facility is not available to them, according to the government website. The e-visa facility currently available to 17 sub-categories of travellers, including medical, student, ...
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on July 20 the Centre's plea against a Delhi High Court verdict setting aside the tender awarded to private firms for outsourcing Consular, Passport and Visa (CPV) services at Indian missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was urged by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the high court's decision has made rendering of visa and other services at these places difficult. The CJI agreed to hear the plea on Monday. While setting aside the tender awarded to private firms for outsourcing CPV services, the high court had directed the Centre to issue a fresh Request for Proposals (RFP), inviting fresh bids. The solicitor general said that fresh tenders were awarded following the procedure, but no new entity can start functioning straightaway, and as a result, such services have almost become dysfunctional. In its verdict, the high court said that w
Digital payment authentication must move beyond passwords and one-time passwords (OTPs) as artificial intelligence-driven commerce gathers pace, a top Visa official said on Thursday. "Authentication cannot remain dependent on passwords or one-time codes designed for an earlier digital era. It must become secured by design, invisible to the consumer, and resilient against increasingly sophisticated fraud," Suresh Sethi, group country manager for India and South Asia of Visa, said at a company event. The global payments major launched its 'Payment Passkey' solution in India on Thursday. The company said VPP enables consumers to authenticate online card payments using capabilities already built into their mobile devices, including fingerprint, facial recognition, device PIN or pattern, instead of relying solely on OTPs. This helps satisfy the two-factor authentication requirement applicable in India. Sethi said the solution is built on globally accepted FIDO standards and is designed
Payments giant Visa said Wednesday that it has embedded its payment network inside of ChatGPT, empowering the chatbot to independently shop and complete transactions on behalf of its user. It means AI agents can not only recommend products but complete the purchase on the user's behalf, at potentially any merchant that accepts Visa. The payment network's previous attempts at this technological leap were confined to a single retailer or a small set of enrolled merchants. It is not OpenAI's first attempt at e-commerce. The company late last year announced Instant Checkout, which allowed ChatGPT to scour the internet for a specific item like a digital personal shopper. But the process was prone to errors and was not widely adopted by merchants due to the fee that OpenAI was charging merchants. The company retired Instant Checkout in March. Visa's collaboration is different from OpenAI's previous attempts, as it will allow users to link their Visa cards to ChatGPT to shop and make it ..
Indian nationals will no longer need a transit visa when travelling to another country with a layover at a German airport, the country's embassy said here on Tuesday. The decision will come into effect on June 3, 2026. Every year, a large number of Indians, including students, professionals and tourists, travel through German airports, on way to other destinations. "Indian nationals will no longer need a transit visa when travelling to another country with a layover at a German airport. The lifting of the so-called airport transit visa requirement for Indian citizens was announced in the Federal Law Gazette on June 2, 2026, and takes effect on June 3, 2026," the German embassy said in a statement. "It underlines the Federal Government's commitment to deepening German-Indian relations, facilitating the movement of people, and further strengthening economic ties," it said. This comes as a result of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's visit to India in January, the embassy said. In