With the objective of harnessing new technologies for enhancing the digital payments experience for users, the RBI has proposed to enable conversational payments on UPI, which will enable users to engage in conversation with AI-powered systems to make payments.
The RBI has also planned to introduce offline payments on UPI using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology through UPI-Lite on-device wallet and enhance the transaction limit for small value digital payments in off-line mode from Rs 200 to Rs 500 within the overall limit of Rs 2,000 per payment instrument.
Announcing these measures on Thursday, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that these initiatives will further deepen the reach and use of digital payments in the country.
Public Tech Platform
The RBI, in association with the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), started a pilot project in September 2022 for frictionless credit delivery through end-to-end digital processes, starting with Kisan Credit Card (KCC) loans. The pilot for KCC loans is currently operational in select districts of Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, UP and Maharashtra. Recently, dairy loans have been included in the pilot project in select districts of Gujarat.
Based on the learnings from the pilots and to expand the scope of end-to-end digital lending processes, a Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit delivery is being developed by the RBIH. Das added: “The Platform is intended to be rolled out as a pilot project in a calibrated manner. It will have an open architecture and open Application Programming Interface (API) and Standards, to which all financial sector players can connect seamlessly. This initiative will accelerate the penetration of credit to hitherto underserved regions and further deepen financial inclusion.”
Supervisory data submission
The Reserve Bank has, from time to time, issued several guidelines on submission of supervisory returns by supervised entities. It has been decided by the RBI to consolidate and harmonise such guidelines into a single Master Direction to reduce compliance burden and to promote greater ease of doing business for supervised entities.
