Over the years, the Reserve Bank of India has prioritised security of digital payments, in particular the requirement of Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) for making payments. No specific factor was mandated for authentication, but the digital payments ecosystem has primarily adopted SMS-based OTP as AFA. While OTP is working satisfactorily, technological advancements have made available alternative authentication mechanisms.

As part of enhancing the robustness of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), it was announced in the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies dated February 08, 2024, that the onboarding process of AePS Touchpoint Operators will be streamlined. In recent times, there have been instances of frauds perpetuated through AePS due to identity theft or compromise of customer credentials.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed monetary penalty on the following two Payment System Operators (PSOs) for non-compliance with certain provisions of the Master Direction – Know Your Customer (KYC) Direction, 2016 dated February 25, 2016 (as updated from time to time). S.No. Name of the PSO Speaking Order dated Amount of Penalty (₹ lakh) 1 Manappuram Finance Limited July 16, 2024 41.50 2 Ola Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. July 16, 2024 33.40

The Reserve Bank had announced opening of the Fifth Cohort (Theme Neutral) under Regulatory Sandbox vide Press release dated October 27, 2023. 2. The Reserve Bank received twenty-two applications of which five have been selected for the ‘Test Phase’. The entities, as per details below, shall commence testing of their solutions from August 2024:

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 March 2024 stands at 445.50 as against 418.77 for September 2023.  The RBI-DPI index has increased across all parameters driven by significant growth in payment performance and payment infrastructure across the country over the period.  The index series since its inception is as under:  Period RBI - DPI Index March 2018 (Base) 100 March 2019 153.47 September 2019 173.49 March 2020 207.84 September 2020 217.74 March 2021 270.59 September 2021 304.06 March 2022 349.30 September 2022 377.46 March 2023 395.57 September 2023 418.77 March 2024 445.50   (Puneet Pancholy) Chief General Manager Press Release: 2024-2025/774