RBI formalises guidelines for regulating payment aggregators, gateways

Payment gateways, says the latest guidelines, will be considered as technology providers or outsourcing partners of banks or non-banks, as the case may be.

The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday released guidelines for regulating payment aggregators and payment gateways, nearly six months after it first proposed regulating these entities in a discussion paper. 

While the original discussion paper, which was released in September last year, suggested three ways to look at the issue- no regulation, light touch regulation or full regulation, the final guidelines seem to have favoured the third alternative. 

The new guidelines say that a payment aggregator (entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments) should be a company incorporated in India under the Companies Act, 1956