"In pursuance of its vision to promote digital payments, Reserve Bank’s endeavour has been to establish state of the art payment systems that are efficient, convenient, safe, secure and affordable," the bank said in a statement.
In a huge relief to savings account holders, the Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to waive service charges on for NEFT with effect from January 2020.
"In pursuance of its vision to promote digital payments, Reserve Bank’s endeavour has been to establish state of the art payment systems that are efficient, convenient, safe, secure and affordable," the bank said in a statement.
The central bank further said that digital payments constituted a high 96% of total non-cash retail payments during the period October 2018 to September 2019. "During the same period, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) systems handled 252 crore and 874 crore transactions with year on year growth of 20% and 263%, respectively. This rapid growth in the payment systems, inter-alia, has been facilitated by a series of measures taken by the Reserve Bank of India," it added.
Along with the service fee waiver, RBI has also proposed banks to operationalise the Acceptance Development Fund to increase acceptance infrastructure with effect from January 1, 2020. A committee should also be constituted to assess the need for plurality of QR codes and merits of their co-existence or convergence from both systemic and consumer viewpoints, the bank said.
The benchmarking exercise undertaken by the Reserve Bank reveals a high position enjoyed by the country in various parameters in the payment systems.
The National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) is an electronic funds transfer system maintained by the RBI to transfer funds from one bank account to another. Any individual or company can make a money transfer to an individual or company's bank account with any bank that is a member of the NEFT scheme, according to the RBI.
In July, RBI had done away with charges on NEFT and RTGS transactions.
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