The Reserve Bank of India s (RBI) has taken up the task of preparing a new Payment Systems Vision document. According to deputy governor R Gandhi, the regulator is woking on the next Payment Systems Vision document and he invited market participants to take serious interest in developing the payment systems. He said the payments landscape in India is changing fast and the key elements are the regulatory focus on creating robust payments infrastructure, technology enabling solutions and others. Interoperability of the technology is the key and critical ingredient for evolving a larger payment ecosystems, he added.
He said electronic benefit transfer is a clear strategy to promote efficient payment systems. Gandhi also said there is urgent need to increase the number of alternative delivery channels in rural areas as banks tend to focus mainly on metropolitan and urban centres. He said digital channels should be available in tier 3 to tier 6 centers and mentioned that India in order to reach the level of other BRIC countries would need 20 million PoS terminals as against the current 1.2 million.
