No charges on NEF T payments from Jan: RBI

Come January 2020, and customers may not have to pa y any charges for transactions done th rough th e popular NEFT system.

A proposal in this regard has been moot ed by the R BI to give impetus to digital transactions on the third anniversary of demonetisation.

The central bank has also proposed tha tF ASTags would be enabled to pay for parking fee a nd even at fuel stations. Digital payments constituted a high 96 per cent of total non -cash retail payments du ring the October 2018 to September 2019.

During the same period, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) an d Unified Payments Interface (UPI) systems handled 252 crore and 874 crore transactions with year on year growth of 20 per cent and 263 per cent, respectively.

"This rapid growth in the payment systems, inter-alia, has been facilitated by a series of measures taken by the Reserve Bank of India," the central bank said in a statement on furthering digital payments.

Now to further em power every citizen with an" Excep ti on al(e) Payment Experience ", and provide her access to a bouquet of options, the RBI said it proposes to "mandate banks not to charge savings bank account customers for online transactions in the NEFT system with effect from January 2020".

It also plans to operational is et he' Acceptance Development Fund' to increase acceptance infrastructure with from January 1, 2020.

A committee would also be setup to assess the need for plurality of QR cod es and merits of their co-existence or convergence from both systemic and consumer viewpoints.

Further, the central bank has plans to permit all authorised payment systems and instruments for linking with National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) FAST a gs.