Flipkart enables international card transactions, excludes wallet top-up & Flyte payments

India's largest consumer e-commerce player Flipkart has partnered with San Fransisco-based eCommerce payment management company CyberSource, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Visa Inc, to enable payment through credit/debit cards issued internationally.

Now, consumers overseas will be able to make purchases from Flipkart for their friends and family in India. However, this would not mean Flipkart would start shipping abroad.

Moreover, Flipkart has excluded payments through such internationally issued credit and debit cards for its digital content store Flyte, which has both digital music and e-books. It has also kept out its virtual wallet and eGV payments/top-ups from this provision.

According the Flipkart's help page, including India, the company will accept VISA, MasterCard, Maestro, American Express credit/debit cards issued by Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.

"With this strategic initiative, we have now opened up a much larger market for international customers who are increasingly looking to buy and ship gifts/products within India, without compromising on our high focus on online safety and security. The partnership with CyberSource leverages the PCI-DSS certification we received early last year to create a tightly integrated and secure user experience, consistent with the customer obsessed culture of Flipkart," said Mekin Maheswari- GM, payments and digital media, Flipkart.

PCI DSS 2.0 certification enables the retailer to save credit and debit card details of a customer (with permission) so that in future the user can pay with one click.

Many sites and even offline retailers in India do not accept card payments for credit and debit cards issued abroad. This is partly for risk mitigation and to avoid frauds.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)