The Reserve Bank of India has released Vision-2018 for Payment and Settlement Systems in India. The vision reiterates the commitment of RBI to encourage greater use of electronic payments by all sections of society so as to achieve a ‘less-cash’ society. The objective is to facilitate provision of a payment system for the future that combines the much-valued attributes of safety, security and universal reach with technological solutions which enable faster processing, enhanced convenience, and the extraction and use of valuable information that accompanies payments. According to RBI, all segments of electronic payments, particularly retail electronic payments, have shown healthy growth both in terms of volume and value of usage. With increasing number of banks offering mobile banking services and driven by the growth in e-commerce and use of mobile payment applications, the volume of mobile banking transactions has increased nearly seven-fold and the value of transactions has shown a steep rise, it said. Card transactions have also grown significantly at both ATMs as well as at the POS with the growth in debit card usage at POS picking up significantly. The growth in volume and value of transactions using prepaid payment instruments issued by banks and authorised non-bank entities has also been significant. The volume and value in IMPS has also grown significantly with the development of the IMPS as a multi-channel system providing various options to customers to originate transactions. Cheque payments, on the other hand, are showing a declining trend in terms of volume as well as value between 2013 and 2016, RBI said. The broad contours of Vision-2018 revolve around the 5 Cs: Coverage – by enabling wider access to a variety of electronic payment services, Convenience – by enhancing user experience through ease of use and of products and processes, Confidence – by promoting integrity of systems, security of operations and customer protection, Convergence – by ensuring interoperability across service providers and Cost – by making services cost effective for users as well as service providers, it said.
