Bharat Bill Pay to be open for repetitive online payments

In a boost to digital payments, customers will soon be able to use Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) for making repetitive bill payments, barring pre-paid recharges.

“In order to leverage the advantages of the BBPS and harness its full potential, it has been decided to permit all categories of billers (except pre-paid recharges), who provide for recurring bill payments to participate in BBPS on a voluntary basis,” the Reserve Bank of India said on Wednesday in the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, adding that detailed instructions will be issued by September-end.

At present, the payment system covers only five segments – direct-to-home, electricity, gas, telecom, and water bills.

Apart from digitisation of cash-based bill payments, the move is also expected to give customers a standardised bill payment experience, centralised customer grievance redressal mechanism, and prescribed convenience fees.

Meanwhile, to minimise concentration risk and encourage innovation and competition in retail payment systems, the RBI also announced its intent to give on-tap authorisation to entities to operate and provide platforms for Bharat Bill Payment Operating Unit, Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS), and white-label ATMs.

“Comments and feedback received from a wide array of individuals, public and private entities, institutions and industry associations (on a policy paper) suggested the need to encourage more players to participate in and promote pan-India payment platforms,” the RBI said, adding that instructions will be issued by the end of September.

SBI chief hails move

SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said the decision to make available the NEFT platform on 24/7 basis, coupled with on-tap authorisation, will add depth to retail payments (currently around 85 lakh transactions daily). In another step aimed at protecting customers with the rising trend for digital payments, the RBI also proposed the creation of a Central Payment Fraud Registry.

“With the digital payment ecosystem making substantial progress... fraud risk monitoring and management by the stakeholders have assumed importance.

“It has always been the endeavour of the Reserve Bank to improve the confidence of customers in the payment systems,” it said, adding that the Payment System Vision 2021 also envisages a framework for collecting data on frauds in the payment systems.

Under the proposal, payment system participants will be given access to the registry for near-real-time fraud monitoring, and the aggregated fraud data will be published to educate customers on emerging risks.

“A detailed framework in this regard will be put in place by the end of October 2019,” the RBI said. At present, banks can also report all banking frauds to the RBI’s Central Fraud Monitoring Cell.