Is your debit/credit card expiring during the lockdown? Here are the options

New Delhi, Apr 22: The extended lockdown owing to the coronavirus pandemic has dented almost every sector in the country. One big challenge for the banks now is to issue credit and debit cards that would expire now.

With courier services not functioning due to the lockdown, it would not be possible for banks to send debit and credit cards to its customers. The courier service is not being allowed to function by the local authorities despite the Centre mandating a restart post-April 20.

At an average, nearly 50 lakh cards come up for renewal every month. Going by the data of the RBI, the banking industry added 1.7 lakh credit cards and 1.13 crore debit cards in April 2015. There would be 90 lakh cards coming up for renewal this month, even if 80 per cent of them have a 5 year validity period.

For the banks, it would be impossible to courier the cards now, given the existing circumstances. The situation in May too would be no different as 60 lakh cards had been added in May 2015.

The question now is what will the customer do the card expires. The customer would not get a new card owing to the lockdown. The banks have an option of extending the validity period the cards, but it is a tedious process. Banks would need to do segregation according to the customers. Following this, it would have to be processed both at the bank's end and also get the merchant systems updated.

The other option is cashless withdraws and virtual cards. There are very few banks that have a cashless withdrawal facility. The other option, but with constraints is the virtual card. With virtual cards, one can make an e-transaction, but cannot withdraw cash. The only other option for customers now is to go to banks and withdraw cash.