The Reserve Bank of India has come out with final guidelines for prepaid payment instruments (PPI) such as closed, semi-closed and open wallets, which say all the PPIs will now be interoperable. The guidelines say interoperability shall be enabled in phases for the PPIs and that in the first phase, the issuers (both bank and non-bank entities) shall make all KYC-compliant PPIs issued in the form of wallets interoperable among themselves through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) within 6 months. Subsequently, interoperability shall be enabled between wallets and bank accounts through UPI and for PPIs issued in the form of cards later. However, banks may continue to issue PPIs in association with authorized card networks. RBI has also mentioned that PPI issuers will have to adhere to the technical and operational requirements for such interoperability, including those relating to safety and security, risk mitigation, among others. The guidelines also say that all the companies seeking a license to operate wallets will have to have a minimum positive net worth of Rs 5 crore which needs to be maintained for 3 years always, following which they need to have a net worth of Rs 15 crore always. Existing wallet companies need to maintain Rs 15 crore by 31 March 2020. RBI has also said all the semi-closed PPIs should be upgraded to full KYC norms with 12 months and the minimum details for KYC shall include OTP verified mobile number and self-declaration of name, address, gender, date of birth and unique identification number of any of the ‘officially valid document’.
