The Reserve Bank of India’s ‘Payments Vision 2025’ document has recommended the possibility of implementing a National Card Switch to process card transactions at Point of Sale (PoS) terminals and resultant settlements.
This could promote competition, thereby bringing in more efficiency and innovation in the processing of such transactions.
At present, while card transactions at ATMs are processed through either the NFS (National Financial Switch) or ATM networks or the concerned card networks, card transactions at PoS terminals are processed only through the concerned card network.
Card payments networks operating in India include MasterCard Asia/ Pacific Pte Ltd, Singapore; Visa Worldwide Pte Ltd, Singapore; National Payments Corporation of India; American Express Banking Corp, US; and Diners Club International Ltd, US.
All ATM transactions are primarily processed through the National Financial Switch.
The document has also suggested that the feasibility of linkage of credit cards and credit components of banking products to UPI (Unified Payments Interface) should be explored. This will offer more avenues and greater convenience to users in making payments through UPI platform.
A UPI user can only link the bank account (savings / current account) and the debit card to the UPI Virtual Payment Address (VPA).
Per RBI’s Payments Vision, the possibility of interoperability for contactless transit card payments in offline mode shall be explored to facilitate seamless travel with a single payment instrument usable across different transit operators.
Alternate risk-based authentication mechanisms leveraging behavioral biometrics, location / historical payments, digital tokens, in-app notifications, etc., will be explored, according to the document.
The aforementioned initiative is in view of emerging concerns with OTP-based authentication in terms of increasing cases of phishing / vishing / smishing modes for divulgence of customer confidential details.
The Payments Vision 2025 has the core theme of ‘E-Payments for Everyone, Everywhere, Everytime’ (4Es), and aims to provide every user with safe, secure, fast, convenient, accessible and affordable e-payment options.
The vision is to provide every user with Safe, Secure, Fast, Convenient, Accessible, and Affordable e-payment options (6 Attributes).