Banking

NPCI Gets Final Approval From RBI To Function As Bharat Bill Payment Central Unit

28.07.2017

In a bid to further strengthen and regulate digital payments, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), being an umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in India has now received the final approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to function as the Bharat Bill Payment Central Unit (BBPCU) and operate as the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS). Last year, around 8 BBPS units took part in pilot project, now the NPCI has finally received permission from Reserve Bank of India with a direction from RBI to operate the Central Unit as a Strategic Business Unit of NPCI. It is analyzed that, bills worth of RS. 45 Crores comprising of Electricity, Telecom, DTH, Water and Gas are permitted under BBPS and it will further provide a major push to digital payments. It will be a revolution in bill payment system across the country. As of now ,there are 24 Bharat Bill Payment Operating Unit certified by National Payments Corporation of India.

NPCI has 10 promoter banks namely Bank of Baroda, State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, Canara Bank, Citibank and HSBC. During the last five years, the organization has grown multi-fold from 2 million transactions a day to 20 million transactions now. The range of services has grown from a single service of switching of inter-bank ATM transactions, to Cheque Clearing, Immediate Payments Service (24x7x365), Automated Clearing House, a domestic card payment network named RuPay to provide an alternative to international card schemes and other related services.

The concept of Bharat Bill Payment System was created by Reserve bank of India. The Reserve bank, after setting up the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems (BPSS) in 2005, released a vision document in which a proposal was initiated to set up an umbrella institution for all the retail payment systems in India. The main object was to consolidate and integrate the multiple systems with varying service levels into nation-wide uniform and standard business process for all retail payment systems and further to facilitate an affordable payment mechanism to benefit the public at large across the country.

Infact, with the increasing dependence on digital transactions and the government also encouraging to use more and more digital way of payments, this approval of RBI to act as central unit, will help a lot in facilitating even the common people across India to avail and get through the digital transactions in a simpler and easier manner. However, it will have to be seen that how effectively and efficiently this institution takes care of threats of cyber related crimes as it is one of the main concern for people before they avail the benefits of digital payments and transactions.

Tags : NPCI Bill payment Approval Central Unit

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