Commercial Bank has witnessed an upsurge in the use of its ‘contactless cards’, particularly at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to EGM, Consumer Banking, Amit Sah.

“Since the pandemic, our volumes for contactless tap have gone up almost four times year-on-year from October 2019. The value of a good technology and infrastructure simply came out during the pandemic, and I think we are now getting a million taps per month in Qatar,” Sah told Gulf Times.

Citing a “huge adoption” in contactless cards, Sah estimated that the number of users increased to “90%” in 2020 from “30% to 40%” last year “because everybody is using it now.”

“After Commercial Bank launched its ‘contactless cards’ in 2018, we basically changed that payment infrastructure in this country; the product took off very well and it was very successful,” Sah said.

He also lauded the support extended by the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), saying the QCB was “very helpful,” especially when Commercial Bank increased the card limit per tap from QR100 to QR300.

Speaking about Commercial Bank’s recent partnership with Qatar University (QU) to engage students, Sah said the bank will continue to add value through innovation and technology.

Earlier, Commercial Bank and QU announced the winners of a joint design competition held from October 20 aimed at creating a modern banking experience suitable primarily for QU students.

“Our objective is that innovation and technology should work for creating value, and sometimes it may be something very simple, such as the convenience of place and time, similar to our ‘60 Second Remittance’ initiative, which has transformed this market, and suddenly now everybody is doing it.

“Commercial Bank will continue to listen to its customers…most of the time we launch something, get feedback and keep improving; as far as going to the future is concerned, this is obviously a very fast evolving world and I think that the Covid-19 pandemic has probably accelerated digital transformation by three to five years,” Sah pointed out.

According to Sah, Commercial Bank launched its ‘Sadara Youth’ initiative before the pandemic to engage with the younger generation.

“This is a fully-digitised product; it’s a very nice App built only for the youth and we will continue enhancing it. And since launching ‘Sadara Youth’, we are now represented in all segments…when we do something, Commercial Bank uses global standards as a benchmark,” Sah said.


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