Contactless Payment Introduced for Customers by National Bank of Oman

The revolutionary technology aims to enhance customer experience by adding convenience and saving time.

National Bank of Oman (NBO) announced the launch of its pilot project for contactless payment. Ahmed Al Musalmi, CEO of NBO said that the new service will enhance and enrich the customer experience. The project has been developed in collaboration with MasterCard, which will enable customers to make payments through ‘TapNGo’ technology. NBO Beam cards do not require PIN or a signature.

During the pilot phase, customers will only be able to make transactions which are less than OMR10, but the upper limit will be relaxed in the future, after the bank analyzes the results from the pilot study.

The contactless card will have a chip and a radio frequency antenna, which will enable the transmission of payment details. The transactions are fully secure and will help customers save time. Moreover, the card doesn’t have to be handed over by the customer which adds to the security. Customers will be sent an SMS alert as soon as the transaction goes through.

Initially, only 1,000 selected customers will be provided the contactless debit cards, which can be used at special NBO point-of-sale (POS) machines installed with participating merchants. Around 500 POS devices have been installed at different locations.
Raghav Prasad, General Manager for Gulf countries, MasterCard said that the company is committed to promoting contactless payments solutions across Middle East as countries such as the UAE, Qatar, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia are already equipped with the technology.