New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may launch an interoperable online banking payments system this calendar year, which will enable merchants to make payments faster, Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Monday fund settlement and further facilitate online transactions. .
Speaking at the Digital Payments Awareness Week celebrations in Mumbai, Das said the central bank has approved NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd (NBBL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), to implement such an interoperable system. .
“We expect to launch this interoperable online banking payment system this calendar year. The new system will help merchants settle funds faster,” he said.
The proposed system will enable customers to pay businesses through online banking, regardless of whether their bank and merchant’s payment aggregator are integrated or not.
Currently, online merchant payment transactions are processed through payment aggregators, which are not interoperable. Therefore, banks need to integrate with each payment aggregator separately for different online merchants.
If a customer wishes to pay a merchant from their bank account, there must be an arrangement with the merchant’s payment aggregator and the customer’s bank. Due to the large number of payment aggregators, it is difficult for each bank to integrate with each payment aggregator.
“Due to the lack of a payment system and a set of rules for these transactions, there are delays and settlement risks for merchants to actually receive payments,” Das said, calling this a bottleneck in the digital payments system.
“As a regulator, we are committed to playing our role in India’s digital payments journey,” he said.
(published March 5, 2024 05:04 yes)