Bangladesh Bank yesterday gave the green light to rollout contactless debit and prepaid cards with a view to push digital transactions in the country.

Contactless cards facilitate payment just by waving them at the point of sale terminal without the need for any signature or PIN verification.

The cards are embedded with near-field communication technology that allows secured payments.

The central bank introduced the technology for credit cards in July 2018 for the first time in the country.

The point-of-sale terminal would have a compatible reader where the card would be waved for authenticating transactions.

Compatible merchant terminals can be identified by the contactless logo.

Payments amounting up to Tk 3,000 can be made using the contactless method, and it is up to the customer if they want to complete the payment through this mode or the regular method of signing or keying in the PIN number.

The contactless cards also will have to follow the compliance standards of EMVCo.

EMV originally stood for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa -- the three companies that created the standard.

The standard is now managed by EMVCo, a consortium with control split equally among Visa, Mastercard, JCB, American Express, UnionPay and Discover.

Banks in Bangladesh issued 2.56 crore debit cards and 11.98 lakh prepaid cards as of January this year.