Reserve Bank of India to tackle fintech regulations
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has put together an inter-regulatory working group (WG) to study the entire gamut of regulatory issues relating to fintech and digital banking in India.
The move is designed to help facilitate their development and is the latest in a long list of technological advances in the country.
Aside from key employees of the RBI, the WG consists of representatives from the securities exchange board of India, the insurance regulatory development authority, the pension fund regulatory and development authority, the national payments council of India, the institute for development and research in banking technology, and Standard & Poor’s credit rating bureau in India, Crisil.
It also has representatives from HDFC and State Bank of India, prominent private and public sector banks.
The digital drive
The RBI has a history of trying to improve India’s digital economy.
It recently announced plans for an overhaul of the country’s ATMs to enable the processing of EMV chip and PIN cards by 2017. The RBI says while India’s POS infrastructure accepts and processes EMV chip and PIN cards, the ATM infrastructure, “on the whole”, continues to process card transactions based on data from the magnetic stripe.
The RBI set up a scheme to provide financial assistance to urban co-operative banks (UCBs) for the implementation of core banking solutions.
It also gave formal approval for Swift India Domestic Services (Swift India), which went live this year. Swift India is a joint venture created by Swift, the global banking co-operative, and nine partner banks to “address domestic market needs” of the Indian financial services industry.
Away from the RBI, India’s third largest private sector bank, Axis Bank, launched a new innovation lab, becoming the first domestic bank to do so in India. Dubbed “Thought Factory”, the lab is aimed at accelerating the development of innovative technology solutions for the banking sector and is expected to work closely with the start-up community.
By Soumik Roy, editorial contributor to Banking Technology
