Commonwealth Games 2010 is coming closer, is being held in New Delhi, India in this October. Commonwealth Games 2010 will be organized in 6 main playgrounds of Delhi, more than 4200 athletes will participate in total of 17 Events. Games will be played in 11 days from 3rd October’2010 to 14th October’2010. Opening and closing ceremonies will be held in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

India is a land of rich culture and diversity since ages. Although India is not as developed as EU and North America, people in India are so kind to foreigners and are welcome everywhere.

Before Travelling to India

Here are tips for your Credit Card use and safety.

Take a VISA or Mastercard with you. VISA or Mastercard is accepted in most parts of the world including India. Though AMEX cards are popular, it is still not accepted everywhere in India, except in high profile places.

Before you depart from your home country, call your bank and inform them you are travelling abroad and ask them to permit ATM cash withdrawals abroad (India) AND allow online transactions (to book tickets) in your card while in travel.

Foreign Credit/Debit Cards

Credit Card is one of the most popular way doing electronic money transactions, no matter where you are in the World. Be it for shopping or ATM withdrawals

You will find that if you are from Europe or other countries, most VISA/ MasterCards are issued with a smart chip in the credit card. Be aware if you are a foreigner using those cards in India can cause inconvenience as most shops use a swipe machine that are still not equipped to handle credit card using with those chips. This is because Indian banks only rely on magnetic strips in the credit/debit cards and the technology is yet to come with smart chips. This is a nasty situation and can be sometimes embarrassing. So before you buy anything, make sure you ask the owner of the shop in India, whether they can accept international credit cards like VISA/Mastercard with those smart chips. If their swipe machine doesn’t have a chip processor, you credit card will be declined. As a foreigner this can be ridiculous!

If their swipe machine has chip processor in their swipe machine, ask the owner of the shop to insert the credit card to the chip reader in the swipe machine, pull out and then swipe the magnetic strip of the card once and then enter the billing amount. This way most foreign issued credit cards work in the swipe machines used in India.

If you carry AMEX (American Express) card still many small and medium sized shops in India still can’t accept Amex cards. As a foreigner it is a good idea to take a VISA/Mastercard issued cards. Ask your bank to issue one of them.

ATM Withdrawals

With your international credit or debit card (with or without smart chips), you can easily do a cash withdrawal at over any ATM with Visa or Mastercard or AMEX logo. Most often the card PIN is about 4 or 6 digits long and most bank ATMs very well accept PINs of 4 or 6 digits. The following bank ATMs are very much recommended to do cash withdrawals for foreigners….Look for the logo for VISA, Mastercard and AMEX!

HDFC Bank

HSBC Bank

ICICI Bank

IDBI Bank

Citibank India

You should be able to find ATMs of these banks almost in every corner of the city. It is a good idea to use online ATM locator.

In most cases if you carry a foreign issued debit card, you will be charged a levy for withdrawals abroad by your Bank. Using credit cards for cash withdrawals can be still expensive. Call your bank and check for these exact charges.

For more Cash and Traveling safety tips follow the below link

http://www.common-wealth-games.info

E-Book available for Personal Safety and Travel Security Tips “Common Wealth Games 2010″.

Credit Cards have become popular in India with most of the banks in the country offering their clients credit cards. The market in India is very large and the number of high earning and high net worth individuals in the country has been increasing and will keep on increasing for years to come. Thus these individuals have certain demands and needs which involves not carrying their check book with them whenever they go out shopping. And sometimes a source of instant credit which will be paid back when the next pay check comes is also necessary.

Shopping is the main motive behind the promotion of Credit cards. It is a wonderful weapon for compulsive shoppers with a ready source of credit when they run out of their own money. Seeing this many banks have introduced special schemes through which the use of the credit card benefits the owners of the Credit Cards. HSBC Credit Cards picked up on this point and has one the largest tie up schemes in the market. The bank takes care of their clients through a point system and cash back schemes among a host of other interesting perks which are kept in front of the owner of the credit card to use.

Though the usage of credit cards is no longer limited to only buying food and clothing but now even airline tickets, insurance and even paying the premium amount through the credit card can be done. One can trade in shares through their credit cards. And now there are bank sin the market which now concentrate on the very high net worth individuals and giving specialized and customized services to these kind of clients. Class and quality matters to these clients and the banks like Kotak credit cards have changed themselves to cater to the needs of these individuals.

Credit cards companies don’t all have the same outlook towards the market. There are some companies who concentrate on high net worth individuals and others who concentrate on the mass selling of their cards. Some concentrate on the frequent shoppers and other concentrate on the globetrotters and others concentrate on other avenues. Not all credit card companies have their focus on the mass market with high number of customers in mind. Kotak credit cards are the first company in the country who offer vertical credit cards which helps them find another niche in the otherwise very crowded market.

But there are others which have an interest in all spheres of the market like the HSBC Credit Cards and through innovative marketing strategies and interesting and beneficial schemes have managed to capture and significant portion of the market. Credit Cards is still pretty much an undiscovered commodity in the market but with the size of the untapped Indian market it is a product with a lot of potential.

Web has been maturing in the Indian business scenario at full throttle since 1996 onwards. Initially, entrepreneurs used to get websites developed just for getting an impressive URL printed on their business cards, so that their prospects could check out their websites. Websites in the early days of internet were nothing more than just online brochures.

 With the penetration of Internet connectivity reaching all income group households and of course across all businesses verticals at a phenomenal pace, the dependence of business on internet today is more than ever before.

 Web has finally evolved as a strong medium for influencing the market presence of established as well as upcoming brands. Now, the entrepreneurs are getting websites developed not meagerly for flaunting on their business cards, but for generating actual business leads or online sales.

 Vertical portals like for example largest perfume portals operational in India, http://www.perfume2order.com and http://www.aqualityshop.com are great .com success stories in a short span of just 2 years. These online shops have a sustainable business model that is purely internet based. People in India are now more sporting than ever before as far as making online purchases using Credit Cards is concerned and surprisingly the average order value of the perfumes sold on these kind of portals is more than US$ 50 per piece.

 The .com success is not confined to just consumer goods, it is playing a big role in the sustenance and growth of service industry as well. BPO and Information Technology Industries have been very prompt in strengthening their internet presence. For instance Enterprises like Expertserv http://www.expertserv.com, Forte Financial Services, http://www.ffspl.org, Exa Infotech, http://www.exainfotech.com are some of the very promising enterprises in these domains with very effective online presence. Exa Infotech are the developers and implementers of erPro, the popular Oracle based, ERP Software for small to medium enterprises. Expertserv, is a fast growing call center in Gurgaon with a capacity of over 600 seats and already on the roll for further expansion. My own website, http://www.sagaciousindia.com that offers Search Engine Optimization, Website development and Web Application development services, generates claose to 150 business leads every month. This is a big figure considering the fact that we are a service industry firm.

 Business to business sales which were mainly taking place through online portals is not happening more through company websites and the buyer is interested in buying directly from the manufacturers and not from traders/resellers. Websites of manufacturers for instance, bathroom fittings producers like http://www.bathroomfittingsindia.com bar code equipment and consumables manufacturers / suppliers like http://www.geipl.com have effectively show cased their product range on the websites.

In some parts of the world, a business card is considered an extension of a person. Etiquette coach Syndi Seid goes over the do’s and don’ts of presenting and receiving a card.