RBI to provide liquidity support to banks for smooth NEFT transactions

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will provide liquidity support to banks to facilitate smooth settlement of transactions under the proposed 24x7 National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system.

This is among steps that the central bank announced to support use of the payment and settlement system by customers, especially retail clients. The RBI will extend the collateralised liquidity support on NEFT, which is currently available till 7.45 pm on working days, round the clock. 

This is done with banks holding accounts with the RBI. This will help in better funds management by banks, the RBI said. As a step to provide a robust mechanism for redressal of customer complaints, the RBI had set up an ombudsman scheme for digital transactions in January 2019. 

As an extension of it, the RBI has decided to institutionalise an internal ombudsman scheme at large non-bank prepaid payment instrument (PPI) issuers. These are entities that have more than 10 million pre-paid payment instruments outstanding. The instructions for this move will be put in place by the middle of this month.

The internal ombudsman is intended to facilitate a swift and cost-effective complaint redressal mechanism within the entity and provide an additional tier for grievance redressal, the RBI said.The RBI will disseminate more granular information on payment data covering the payment systems. This is in line with the recommendations of the Committee on Deepening of Digital Payments headed by Nandan Nilekani. The RBI publishes data on its website and in bulletins the various payment and settlement system indicators.

With rapid growth in the issuance of cards in the country, there is a need to ensure growth of acceptance infrastructure in Tier III to Tier VI centres. An ‘Acceptance Development Fund’ (ADF) will be created in consultation with the stakeholders to increase digitisation in these areas. The framework will be operationalised by December 2019, the RBI said. For expanding and deepening the digital payments ecosystem, the RBI said state/union tettitory level bankers committees (SLBCs/ UTLBCs) will identify one district on a pilot basis in consultation with banks and stakeholders. The identified district may be allocated to a bank with significant footprint. This will enable the district to become 100 per cent digitally enabled.