A new bill seeks to empower RBI to regulate various payment and settlement systems, including those operated by non-banks and card companies.
MUMBAI: Global payment gateways Visa and MasterCard may soon have to share information with the Reserve Bank as part of the apex bank's efforts to regulate various payment systems in the country.
Presently, there is no legislation to make it binding on these companies to share information but the government has drafted a bill that will empower RBI to regulate these companies, the regulator's Chief General Manager A P Hota told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on e-payments.
"The Payment and Settlement Systems Bill, likely to be tabled in the monsoon session, will empower us to regulate companies like Visa and MasterCard...it will make it mandatory on their part to share information with us," Hota said.
The bill seeks to empower RBI to regulate and oversee various payment and settlement systems including those operated by non-banks and card companies.
A Parliamentary Committee has submitted its report on the bill and it is likely to be tabled in the monsoon session, he added.
In India, a host of payment systems are in operation ranging from manual paper-based clearing to the real time gross settlement (RTGS) system for facilitating non-cash mode of payments.
RBI will also promote electronic transactions, whose number is expected to cross 700 million in the next three years, but would not disincentivise cheque-based transactions.
"We expect the number of e-transactions to double in the next three years from the present 380 million but there is no plan to disincentivise cheque-based transaction to retain a choice for customers," Hota said.
"The cheque-based transaction growth in declining. From 14 per cent in 2004-05, it has come down to 6.3 per cent in 2006-07. However, the absolute volumes remain high," he said, adding that it should witness a negative growth in the next three years.
The Payment and Settlement Systems Bill also seeks to give legal recognition to the netting procedure and provides for the finality and irrevocable nature of settlement.
Once this Bill is enacted, the RBI would have the powers to lay down operational and technical standards for various payment systems.
Besides specifying the duties of the system providers, the RBI would also have the powers to audit and inspect their systems.
On Electronic Clearing System (ECS), Hota said that banks need to have an end-to-end platform to reap its benefits.
"Still the core banking platforms of a large number public sector banks are not integrated with the RBI platform," he said.
"A total of 14 million transactions are being carried out through ECS per month but we still remain frustrated as the potential has not yet been attained," Hota said.
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