Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today inaugurated the 5th Digital Payments Awareness Week (DPAW). DPAW is an initiative to highlight the impact and importance of digital payments and to create awareness about safe usage of digital payment products. During the week, RBI, along with payment system operators, banks and other stakeholders, conducts nationwide awareness activities, including multimedia campaigns, on-ground educational programs and social media-based outreach.

Governor, Reserve Bank of India today held an interaction with non-bank Payment System Operators and FinTechs along with their associations/SROs. The interaction was a part of the Reserve Bank's series of engagements with the Payments and Fintech ecosystem. The interaction was also attended by Deputy Governors Shri M. Rajeshwar Rao, Shri T. Rabi Sankar and Shri Swaminathan J., along with Executive Directors-in-Charge of Payments, Fintech and Regulation.

As announced in Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies dated February 07, 2025, Reserve Bank of India today placed on its website draft directions on Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) for cross-border Card Not Present (CNP) transactions for public comments.

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 2024 stands at 465.33 as against 445.5 for March 2024, which was announced on July 26, 2024.

The Reserve Bank has today published the Payment System Report, December 2024. This report, in addition to analysing the trends in payment transactions carried out using various payment systems in India during the last five calendar years up to CY-2024, covers important developments in the payment ecosystem and provides an in-depth analysis into UPI. Henceforth, the Report will be published on RBI website on half yearly basis.

The Reserve Bank of India, in exercise of the powers conferred on it under Section 8 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, has revoked the Certificate of Authorisation (CoA) of the below mentioned Payment System Operator (PSO):

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: