The Commercial Bank now sees over a million taps each month for its contactless debit and credit cards, a four-fold increase from last year particularly due to the safety precautions taken by customers making their day-to-day payments amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an official has said.
“We are having over a million taps a month now and almost everybody is using it. We saw a huge adoption for the Tap N’ Pay card technology, which has multiplied four times during October this year compared to October last year. About 30-40 percent of customers were using the contactless cards last year, and now we have about 80-90 percent of the customers using it," Amit Sah, EGM and Head of Retail Banking at Commercial Bank said while talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the award ceremony for the bank’s design competition winners at the Qatar University recently.
"The support of the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) which has increased the limit per tap during the pandemic from QR100 to QR300 was also an enourmous help,” he said.
Sah added that the Commercial Bank’s Tap N’ Pay card technology which was launched in 2018, was one of the great achievements by the bank in its digital transformation efforts.
“We are one of the largest issuers in this market. We basically changed the payment infrustructure in the country. The product took off very well. And during the COVID-19 pandemmic, our volumes had gone up four times of tap. Simply, the value of a good technology came out during the pandemic,” he added.
Commercial Bank, which has been winning awards for its digital and technological advancements in the banking sector, including the coveted The Banker Award for “Innovation in Digital Banking” in the Middle East 2020, will not rest on its laurels and will continue to develop new solutions which the customers would want, said Sah.
“Commercial Bank has been in the market for the past 45 years and is a forerunner in terms of technology. As far as going into the future is concerned, this is a very fast evolving world. And the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation," said Sah.
“From a stage where at one point, digitisation was about what the companies wanted to do, not it’s all about what customers want. So how do we just make it very easy and simple. Our objective is innovation and tecnology should work for creating value. It’s like the 60 Seconds Remittance Solution we launched, which has also transformed the market. Our objective will continue, which is listen to customers,” he added.
Sah (pictured) has also previuosly told The Peninsula that the bank is expecting a substantial increase in digtal payments in Qatar, particularly in the run up to the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022, adding that the bank is expecting a 50 percent to 100 percent surge in digital payments during the World Cup year, with five to ten million transaction volume per day.
