Reserve Bank of India has been collaborating bilaterally with various countries to link India’s Fast Payments System (FPS) – the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), with their respective FPSs for cross-border Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant (P2M) payments. While India and its partner countries can continue to benefit through such bilateral connectivity of Fast Payment Systems, a multilateral approach will provide further impetus to our efforts in expanding the international reach of Indian payment systems.

In the Fourth Cohort of the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) with ‘Prevention and Mitigation of Financial Frauds’ as its theme, six entities were to commence testing of their products which was communicated vide Press Release dated January 05, 2023.

Shri Shaktikanta Das, Governor, Reserve Bank of India today launched three major initiatives of the Reserve Bank of India, namely the PRAVAAH portal, the Retail Direct Mobile App and a FinTech Repository in the presence of Shri Satish Kashinath Marathe, Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi, Directors on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank; Prof. H. Krishnamurthy, member of Board, Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH); Dr. M D Patra, Shri M Rajeshwar Rao, Shri T Rabi Sankar, Shri Swaminathan J, Deputy Governors of the Reserve Bank; MD & CEOs of select banks and NBFCs; Chief Executive, IBA ; MD/CEOs of Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL), Reserve Bank Information Technology Ltd. (ReBIT), Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS) and RBIH; representatives of Fintechs and other senior officials of the Reserve Bank.

The Governor, Reserve Bank of India held a meeting on May 08, 2024, with the major stakeholders in the UPI ecosystem viz. Banks, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Third Party Application Providers and Technology Service Providers to discuss potential strategies for further expanding the reach of UPI. The meeting was also attended by Deputy Governor, Shri T. Rabi Sankar along with Senior Officials of RBI. There were wide ranging discussions on various aspects to widen and deepen the adoption and usage of UPI. The stakeholders shared their valuable inputs and suggestions, covering broadly the following:

It had come to the notice of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that TalkCharge Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (entity), a company having its registered office at Unit No. 323, JMD Megapolis, 3rd Floor, Sohna Road, Sector 48, Gurgaon, Haryana-122018, is issuing Prepaid Payment Instruments (Wallets) through its website and app (application) ‘TalkCharge’ without obtaining the required authorisation from RBI under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.

Reserve Bank of India today placed on its website, for public comments, two draft directions on regulation of Payment Aggregators, as below:

NEFT system has achieved a milestone on February 29, 2024, by processing 4,10,61,337 transactions, the highest number of transactions processed in a day so far.

It has come to the notice of Reserve Bank of India that a Card Network had an arrangement that enables businesses to make card payments through certain intermediaries, to entities that do not accept card payments. 2. Under this arrangement, the intermediary accepts card payments from corporates for their commercial payments and then remits the funds via IMPS/RTGS/NEFT to non-card accepting recipients.

Reserve Bank of India and Nepal Rastra Bank today signed and exchanged Terms of Reference for integration of fast payment systems of India and Nepal, viz., Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and National Payments Interface (NPI) of Nepal, respectively.  The integration is aimed at facilitating cross-border remittances between India and Nepal by enabling users of the two systems to make instant, low-cost fund transfers.

Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister of Mauritius, Mr. Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, and Hon’ble President of Sri Lanka Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe today witnessed the virtual launch of RuPay cards and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) connectivity between India and Mauritius, as well as UPI connectivity between India and Sri Lanka. Reserve Bank of India Governor, Shri Shaktikanta Das, Bank of Mauritius Governor, Mr. Harvesh Seegolam, and Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor, Dr. P. Nandalal Weerasinghe were also present on the occasion.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been publishing a composite Reserve Bank of India – Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI) since January 1, 2021 with March 2018 as base to capture the extent of digitisation of payments across the country. The index for September 2023 stands at 418.77 as against 395.57 for March 2023, which was announced on July 27, 2023.

The Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) Scheme was operationalised by the Reserve Bank in January 2021, for a period of three years. The objective of the scheme was to encourage deployment of payment acceptance infrastructure such as physical Point of Sale (PoS) terminals, Quick Response (QR) codes, in tier-3 to tier-6 centres, North Eastern states and Union Territories (U.T.s) of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. From August 26, 2021, beneficiaries of PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi Scheme) in tier-1 and tier-2 centres are also covered

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Bank of England (BoE) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning cooperation and exchange of information in relation to the Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL). The MoU establishes a framework for the BoE to place reliance on RBI’s regulatory and supervisory activities while safeguarding UK financial stability. The MoU also demonstrates the importance of cross-border cooperation to facilitate international clearing activities and the BoE’s commitment to deference to other regulators’ regimes.

A draft circular on processing and settlement of small value export and import related payments facilitated by Online Export-Import Facilitators (OEIFs) was issued for comments on April 7, 2022, by the Foreign Exchange Department of RBI under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. As the activities of OEIFs / Online Payment Gateway Service Providers (OPGSPs) are more aligned with payments, the guidelines have been redrafted taking into consideration the feedback received on the April 07, 2022 draft circular and from the perspective of Payment Systems. It is therefore, proposed to regulate entities facilitating payment and settlement for online cross border export / import transactions as Payment Aggregators – Cross Border (PA-CB) under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has today placed on its website the circular on Regulation of PA-CB.

In the Third Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) with ‘MSME Lending’ as its theme, eight entities were to commence testing of their products which was communicated vide Press Release dated June 06, 2022.
2. Products of the entities which completed the ‘Test Phase’ were evaluated based on mutually agreed test scenarios and expected outcomes. Accordingly, the five products outlined below have been found viable within the boundary conditions defined during testing under RS:

The Reserve Bank of India had announced vide Press Release dated September 5, 2022 that the Fifth Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) will be theme neutral. It now announces opening of application window for the Fifth Cohort to eligible entities.

RBI had released the Discussion Paper on "Introduction of Expected Credit Loss Framework for Provisioning by Banks" on January 16, 2023, soliciting inputs from all stakeholders. The ECL approach to provisioning is a paradigm shift from the current incurred loss-based provisioning regime. The Discussion Paper envisages a forward looking, principle-based framework for provisioning for credit risk, which has already been implemented under International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

2. Several comments have been received from various stakeholders on the issues flagged in the Discussion Paper, which are being examined by the Reserve Bank. While the regulatory stance to be taken in respect of each of the issues shall be examined by the Reserve Bank, it has been decided to constitute a Working Group in order to get independent inputs on some of the technical aspects having a bearing on the significant transition involved.

3. The Working Group will be chaired by Prof. R. Narayanaswamy, former Professor, IIM Bangalore and shall consist of domain experts from academia and industry as well as representatives from select banks as given below:

Prof. Sanjay Kallapur, ISB, Hyderabad

Shri Rajosik Banerjee, KPMG

Shri S Srinivasa Rao, SBI

Shri Rajendra Khandelwal, ICICI Bank

Shri Susanta Baishya, HDFC Bank

Shri Adish Yadav, Canara Bank

Shri Pravinkumar Taparia, Saraswat Co-operative Bank

Shri Sridharan N, Equitas Small Finance Bank

4. The Terms of Reference for the Working Group would be as follows:

Delineate the principles that will be required to be considered by banks while designing the credit risk models to be used for assessing and measuring expected credit losses.

Recommend factors that banks should consider for determination of credit risk based on the guidance provided in IFRS 9 and principles laid out by BCBS.

Suggest the methodology to be used for undertaking external independent validation of the models.

Recommend, based on comprehensive data analysis, prudential floors for provisioning.

Any other issue incidental to the above.
5. The recommendations of the Working Group would be duly factored in while framing the draft guidelines, which shall be put in the public domain for comments before issue of final guidelines.

(Yogesh Dayal)     
Chief General Manager

Press Release: 2023-2024/1043