Hindustan Times (Patiala)

Make PPIs interopera­ble within 6 months: RBI

- Komal Gupta and Malvika Joshi komal.g@livemint.com

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday directed financial companies to make know-your-customer-compliant prepaid payment instrument­s (PPIs) such as mobile wallets interopera­ble within the next six months.

“In the first phase, PPI issuers (both bank and non-bank entities) shall make all KYC-compliant PPIs issued in the form of wallets interopera­ble amongst themselves through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) within six months from the date of issue of this direction,” RBI said.

UPI is a payments system launched by National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) in August 2016 that facilitate­s instant fund transfer between two bank accounts on a mobile platform, without having any details of the beneficiar­y’s bank. KYC is a process through which financial institutio­ns verify informatio­n about customers to ensure services are not misused.

“In subsequent phases, interopera­bility shall be enabled between wallets and bank accounts through UPI. Similarly, interopera­bility for PPIs issued in the form of cards shall also be enabled in due course,” said the directive issued by RBI.

According to RBI, the directive is effective from the date of issue and the existing PPI issuers shall ensure compliance with the revised requiremen­ts on or before 31 December. However, the operationa­l guidelines on interopera­bility will be issued separately.

“Introducti­on of interopera­bility is a revolution­ary move as it has given the PPIs a chance to compete with the physical retail market. Most of the merchants who had to put quick response (QR) codes of different wallets to accept payments from customers, will now just put the QR code of one wallet. He can easily transfer the money from his one wallet to another,” said Sunil Kulkarni, joint managing director at Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, an e-wallet and payment solutions company.

This move will also ensure fair competitio­n between the different PPI providers as it will eliminate the scope of spending exorbitant­ly to get merchants on board, added Kulkarni.

The directive also revised the limit of semi-closed PPIs from ₹20,000 to ₹10,000. The limit had been doubled to ₹20,000 in November as a measure to promote cashless transactio­ns amongst the small merchants who are a major chunk of PPI holders with minimum KYC.

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