Interoperable Payment System For Net Banking To Be Launched This Year: RBI Chief
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said that the interoperable payment system for internet banking is expected to be launched this year to facilitate quicker settlement of funds for merchants.
Addressing the Digital Payments Awareness Week here, Das said, Internet Banking is one of the oldest modes for online merchant payment transactions. It is a preferred channel for payments like income tax, insurance premium, mutual fund payments, e-commerce, etc. At present, such transactions processed through Payment Aggregators (PAs) are not interoperable, i.e., a bank is required to separately integrate with each PA of different online merchants.
As a result, if a customer wants to make payment from his bank account to a certain merchant, the merchants PA and customers bank must have an arrangement. Given the multiple number of payment aggregators, it is difficult for each bank to integrate with each PA. Further, due to the lack of a payment system and a set of rules for these transactions, there are delays in actual receipt of payments by merchants and settlement risks.
The new interoperable system will rectify this drawback and facilitate the quicker settlement of transactions between merchants, he explained.
Das said As a regulator, we are committed to play our part in Indias journey in digital payments. He urged all stakeholders like industry, payment system operators, media, digital payment users, and others to take up the responsibility of fulfilling themission of Har Payment Digital.
He pointed out that retail digital payments in India have grown from 162 crore transactions in FY2012-13 to over 14,726 crore transactions in 2023-24 (till February 2024) which is a 90-fold increase over 12 years.
Today, India accounts for nearly 46% of the worlds digital transactions (as per 2022 data). The extraordinary growth in digital payments is also evident in the Reserve Bank’s Digital Payment Index, which has witnessed a four-fold rise in the last five years, he said.
