It may be recalled that the Governor, Reserve Bank of India constituted a Standing Committee on International Financial Standards and Codes in December 1999 in order to identify and monitor developments in global standards and codes, consider aspects of applicability of these standards to Indian financial system, periodically review the status and make available its reports to all concerned organisations in public or private sector. The Standing Committee chaired by D

The National Payments Council under the Chairmanship of Deputy Governor, Shri S.P.Talwar met on June 09, 2000 to discuss the latest developments in the Payments System and the future possibilities. The Council members welcomed the passing of the Information Technology (IT) Bill and the grant of one transponder on INSAT 3-B which will augment the capacity of the Indian Financial Network (INFINET). The Council reviewed the ongoing initiatives for implementing the Centra

The Information Technology applications in the banking and financial sector in India have grown sharply in recent years. IT can be leveraged to bring about significant improvements in a number of areas including decision making, house keeping, customer service, payment flows, etc., in the banking and financial sector. To ensure the accrual of optimal benefits, necessary human resources development measures and requisite steps to beef up security in IT use have to be t

On January 3, 2000, the first full working day of the year, the Reserve Bank of India, banks and financial institutions have been found to be working satisfactorily on the basis of the reports received.Reserve Bank of India The MICR Cheque processing centre at Mumbai using the state-of-the-art Mainframe has completed processing of at par items clearing successfully today. MICR cheque processing at National Clearing Centres of the RBI at Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and

On December 31, 1999 the state-of-the-art MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) cheque processing systems at Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Calcutta continued to operate normally. The centres commenced the normal operations at around 19:00 hours and successfully rolled over to the Year 2000 without any disruption. During the rollover, the hardware, the operating system, the cheque processing application software and associated peripherals like the console, the ter

The MICR Cheque Processing Systems at the four National Clearing Cells of the Reserve Bank of India at the metropolitan centres at Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi have been replaced with Y2K compliant state-of-the-art IBM S/390 mainframe system based cheque processing solutions. The MICR cheque processing has become operational at the four National Clearing Cells. The cheques, presented at these four National Clearing Cells, are being processed on the new syst

The Reserve Bank of India has constituted a Working Group in the Department of Information Technology to study the recommendations on standards for SMART Card based Payment Systems made by the Indian Institute of Technology, Powai. The recommendations have been made in document "SMART Card based Payment System Standards" version 3.0, as part of the "Project SMART Rupees System (SMARS)". The Project ‘SMART Rupees System (SMARS)’ is a pilot project on SMART Card technol

The High Level Working Group constituted by the Reserve Bank of India under the Chairmanship of Shri S.P. Talwar, Deputy Governor reviewed the status of Year 2000 readiness and contingency planing of the banking and financial sector in a meeting held on August 31, 1999. The representatives of the Ministry of Finance and Department of Electronics, Government of India were also present during the meeting.There was also discussion of the criticality of clearing and settl

The first meeting of the National Payments Council constituted by the Reserve Bank of India under the Chairmanship of Deputy Governor, Shri S.P. Talwar to guide the design and development of a modern and efficient Payments and Settlement system for the country was held on July 22, 1999, in Mumbai. The members who attended the meeting included:1.Dr. A.Vasudevan, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India 2.Shri A.T.Panir Selvam, Chairman, Indian Banks Association3.Shri

It has been decided in the meeting of the Standing Committee of BBCH held on November 12, 1998 to extend the area of jurisdiction of Brihanmumbai Bankers Clearing House (BBCH) further so as to include the banks/branches situated in Old Panvel and Badlapur towns with immediate effect. Accordingly, the banks/branches operating in the above areas may participate in the BBCH clearing after the completion of necessary formalities in this regard for which banks have been ad

The Reserve Bank of India has decided to extend the Electronic Clearing Service (ECS - Credit Clearing Scheme) to eight more centres, viz., Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Guwahati, Jaipur, Kanpur, Nagpur, Patna and Thiruvananthapuram with effect from July 1, 1998. It has also been decided to increase the limit on the transaction value under the ECS (Credit) Scheme from the present Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1,00,000 from that date. With this, the Scheme would cover all the centres