RBI publishes Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision-2018

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 23 June 2016 released the “Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision-2018”. The vision reiterates the aims of building a “less-cash” society by encouraging greater use of electronic payments by all sections. The objective is to ensure that a robust payments infrastructure is established in the country to increase accessibility, availability, interoperability and

security.

Contours of Vision-2018

The broad contours of Vision-2018 revolve around 5Cs – Coverage, Convenience, Confidence, Convergence and Cost.Coverage: Enabling wider access to a variety of electronic payment services

Convenience: Enhancing user experience through ease of use and of products and processes

Confidence: Promoting integrity of systems, security of operations and customer protection

Convergence: Ensuring interoperability across service providers

Cost: Making services cost effective for users as well as service providers

Four strategic initiatives to achieve 5Cs

To achieve these, Vision-2018 will focus on four strategic initiatives such as responsive regulation, robust infrastructure, effective supervision and customer centricity.

Responsive Regulation: Involve all stakeholders to promote twin objectives of enhanced coverage with interoperability of the payments system and convenience with security for the end-users in sync with emerging developments and innovations.

Robust Infrastructure: Aim is to increase the accessibility, availability, interoperability and security of the payment systems.

Effective Supervision: Aims to strengthen the resilience of the Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) and System Wide Important Payment Systems (SWIPS) in the country. This also envisages setting up appropriate oversight framework for new systems and augmenting the data reporting and fraud monitoring systems.

Customer Centricity: Envisages streamlining the customer grievance redressal mechanism, focus on building customer awareness and education, and initiate customer protection measures.

Expected Outcomes of Vision 2018

With continued efforts and based on Vision 2015-18, following five outcomes are expected from Vision 2018:

• Continued decrease in the share of paper-based clearing instruments

• Consistent growth in individual segments of retail electronic payment systems viz. NEFT, IMPS, Card transactions, mobile banking, etc.

• Increase in registered customer base for mobile banking

• Significant growth in acceptance infrastructure

• Accelerated use of Aadhaar in payment systems

How it is going to benefit?

With increasing use of technology-based innovative payment products, the strategic initiatives under Vision-2018 are expected to reduce paper-based instruments significantly. It will lead to accelerated growth in mobile banking and other modes of electronic payments.

Background

The RBI has periodically put forth its vision for payment and settlement systems in India, which enunciates the Bank’s objective to migrate to electronic payments and to ensure that the payment systems in India are safe, secure, authorised, efficient and accessible. The previous Vision document covered the period 2012 to 2015.