How-To Guides

Practical guides to EMIs, reward redemptions, lounge access, fee waivers and getting more from your cards.

1987 posts · Page 94 of 166

How-To Guides

How to delete a saved card properly: tokens, merchant vaults, and confirmation

Removing a saved card sounds like a one-tap job, and on the surface it is. But under RBI's tokenisation norms, what sits on the merchant's side isn't your card number — it's a token, a stand-in credential issued with you

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Auditing your saved cards: finding everywhere your card is stored

Your card number has a travel history you never booked. Every one-click checkout, every "save this card for faster payment" tick box, every cab app and food delivery account has left a copy of your card behind. In India,

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Contactless abroad: what changes when you tap outside India

Tapping your Indian card at a terminal abroad feels exactly like tapping at home — until it doesn't. International contactless runs on the same NFC technology, but the rules around PIN thresholds, currency conversion, an

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Wearables and rings: paying without your card or phone

Smartwatches that pay at terminals are now common in India; payment rings and bands exist too, though they're a smaller niche. All of them work on the same principle as phone tap-to-pay — tokenised NFC — packaged into so

9 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Contactless for first-time users: what changes on a basic card

If your first credit card has just arrived — perhaps a basic, entry-level card — it almost certainly supports contactless payments. Nothing about a "basic" card makes its tap function weaker or less safe than a premium c

9 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Turning contactless on and off: managing the toggle in your bank app

Most Indian banking apps let you switch your card's contactless capability on and off without calling anyone. It's a small control with outsized usefulness — for travel, for misplaced cards, and for anyone who simply pre

9 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

Metro, tolls, and fuel: everyday places tap-to-pay fits naturally

Contactless payments earn their keep in the places where seconds matter and hands are full: transit gates, toll booths, and fuel stations. In India, a few of these use cases run on dedicated systems rather than ordinary

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Contactless security: skimming fears vs how the tech actually protects you

The most common worry about contactless cards is skimming — someone with a reader brushing past you in a crowd and draining your account. It's a vivid fear, and it deserves a straight answer: how the technology actually

9 Oct 20264 min read
How-To Guides

The contactless PIN threshold: when you're asked for a PIN and why

Tap a card for a coffee and the payment completes silently; tap for a large electronics purchase and the terminal asks for a PIN. The boundary between the two is not set by your bank, the merchant, or the card — it is a

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Contactless not working at the terminal: the usual culprits

The terminal beeps, or doesn't, the payment fails, and a queue forms behind you. Contactless failures at Indian terminals are common and almost always have a mundane cause. Here is the diagnostic order to run through, fr

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

Tap-to-pay on your phone: tokenised wallets vs the physical card

If you pay by tapping your phone at a terminal, you are using a different piece of technology from the contactless card in your wallet — even though the experience feels identical. Phone tap-to-pay runs on tokenisation,

9 Oct 20265 min read
How-To Guides

How contactless card payments work in India: NFC, the PIN rule, and limits

You tap a card on a terminal and the payment is done — no swipe, no insertion, no PIN typed for most everyday amounts. Contactless payments are now unremarkable at Indian grocery counters and pharmacies, but plenty of us

9 Oct 20265 min read