RBI appoints Nandan Nilekani as chairman of panel on digital payments

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, as the chairman of a five-member high-level committee that will work towards deepening digital payments in India.

The committee’s major role will be to review the existing status of digitisation of payments in the country, identify the current gaps in the ecosystem and suggest ways to bridge them, according to the RBI.

The committee, which will submit a report card to the RBI every three months, will assess the current levels of digital payments in financial inclusion, analyse and identify best practices that can be adopted to accelerate digitisation of the economy and financial inclusion through the greater use of digital payments.

Digital payments

Besides, it will suggest measures to strengthen the safety and security of digital payments and provide a road map on how to increase customer confidence while accessing financial services through digital modes.

The digital payments in the country took off dramatically post demonetisation in November 2016 followed by the launch of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) in 2017 and the Modi government batting heavily for making Aadhaar mandatory for digital transactions.

However, with the recent Supreme Court ruling making Aadhaar not mandatory, there has been a slow down in customer addition by digital payment players. Experts said that Nilekani understands the space well and digital payments might get a major boost.

Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar, said, “ Having an RBI committee on digital payments will go a long way in helping RBI and the ecosystem identify and bridge the gaps in the ecosystem.”

Vishwas Patel, Chairman of Payment Council of India told BusinessLine that, “We welcome this move and hope that some issues related to customer onboarding gets solved. However, it would have been great if the RBI had considered few representation from the payments industry as well.”

Other members of the committee are HR Khan, Former RBI Deputy Governor, Kishore Sansi, Former MD and CEO Vijaya Bank, Aruna Sharma, Former Secretary, Ministry of Information Technology and Steel; and Sanjay Jain, Chief Innovation Officer, Center for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad.