Rural finance encompasses a range of financial services offered to rural customers, including farmers, at all income levels. In a country like India, rural credit is closely related to inclusive economic growth, as it caters to the requirements of agriculture and allied activities, ancillary industries, small businesses, etc. At present, the process for getting such finance requires customer to visit a bank branch in-person along with the proof of land ownership and o

In the Second Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) with ‘Cross-Border Payments’ as its theme, eight entities commenced testing of their products which was communicated vide Press Release dated September 13, 2021. 2. The following four entities have completed the ‘Test Phase’. Sl. No. Sandbox Entity Description 1 Cashfree Payments India Private Limited The product extends a cross-border payment platform to facilitate the purchase of assets listed on foreign exchang

The Reserve Bank had announced the theme for the Fourth Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) as ‘Prevention and Mitigation of Financial Frauds’ vide Press Release dated October 08, 2021. It now announces opening of application window for the Fourth Cohort to eligible entities. 2. The application for the Fourth Cohort may be submitted from June 15, 2022 to August 01, 2022. A scanned copy of the application together with enclosures (maximum size 10 MB), may be forwa

The Reserve Bank had announced opening of the Third Cohort under Regulatory Sandbox vide Press release dated September 13, 2021 for MSME Lending. The Reserve Bank received 22 applications of which eight entities have been selected for the ‘Test Phase’. The entities, as per details below, shall commence testing of their products in June 2022. Sl. No. Sandbox Entity Description 1 FinAGG Technologies Private Limited The product ‘Quick Cash Flow’ is a cash flow based digi

The Reserve Bank had launched its first global hackathon - “HARBINGER 2021 – Innovation for Transformation” with the theme ‘Smarter Digital Payments’ which was communicated vide Press Release dated November 09, 2021. The hackathon received encouraging response with 363 proposals submitted by teams from within India and from 22 other countries including the USA, UK, Sweden, Singapore, Philippines, and Israel. The Hackathon ran in three phases with shortlisting of propo

The Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Shri Shaktikanta Das inaugurated the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) today (March 24, 2022) in Bengaluru. The RBI has set up the RBIH as a Section 8 company under Companies Act, 2013, with an initial capital contribution of ₹100 crore to encourage and nurture financial innovation in a sustainable manner through an institutional set-up. The Hub has an independent Board with Shri Senapathy (Kris) Gopalakrishnan as the Chairm

Reserve Bank is organising its first global hackathon – “HARBINGER 2021 – Innovation for Transformation” with the theme ‘Smarter Digital Payments’. The Hackathon invites participants to identify and develop solutions that have the potential to make digital payments accessible to the under-served, enhance the ease of payments and user experience, while strengthening the security of digital payments and promoting customer protection. HARBINGER 2021 invites innovative id

The Reserve Bank has undertaken various initiatives to realise India’s vision on payment systems by fostering an ecosystem that enables safe, quick and affordable digital payments. In this context, one of the challenges has been to minimise instances of financial frauds, which not only lead to apprehension among new users in adoption of digital payments but also make it difficult for the banks to retain customers who experience such frauds. There is also a lag between

The Reserve Bank had announced the theme for the Third Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox (RS) as ‘MSME Lending’ vide Press Release dated December 16, 2020. It now announces opening of application window for the Third Cohort to eligible entities. 2. The application for the Third Cohort may be submitted from October 01, 2021 to November 14, 2021. A scanned copy of the application, together with enclosures (maximum size 10 MB), may be forwarded through email. (Yogesh D

In the First Cohort under the Regulatory Sandbox with ‘Retail Payments’ as its theme, six entities commenced testing of their products which was communicated vide Press Release dated November 17 and December 24, 2020. 2. The following six entities have completed the ‘Test Phase’. Sl. No. Name of the Sandbox Entity Description of the product (i) Nucleus Software Exports Ltd. (PaySe) PaySe is an offline digital cash product which proposes to help in digitisation of paym