Mastercard is reportedly set to become part of the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) scheme in India.

This move is likely to come just weeks after Visa announced its plans to join the programme.

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The Indian government’s NCMC scheme is ‘One Nation One Card’ programme to promote digital payment transactions across transit modes such as metro and bus.

The NCMC card was first launched by the government along with domestic card scheme RuPay.

The government has now allowed other global schemes to join the NCMC programme.

This NCMC card can be used to process all kinds of transactions such as swipe, tap or dip into a terminal through the chip.

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The card will have an  open loop offline purse capability so that consumers do not have to face delays due to authentication, charge slips and other formalities.

Consumers can use the open loop cards for ATM transactions and at merchant locations.

Mastercard senior vice president of account management for South Asia Vikas Varma has been quoted by The Economic Times as saying: “Around 15 of our customers (banks) in India are at various stages of signing up with us on NCMC.

“Mastercard has been working in smart city projects globally, and we have worked across more than 150 cities for these projects and transit is one of the key areas globally.

“The card, as it is being envisaged today, can sit on any account, the source of funds does not matter, it can be a debit card or a credit card — the same card will have NCMC capabilities.”

Apart from mobility card, Mastercard has been working to put wallets on to card network.  It has held discussions with 25 wallet companies.