On Oct. 9, IND RBI issued statement on regulations, payment system.
IND RBI issued Governor's statement and Statement on developmental and regulatory policies, re regulations relating to lending conduct as well as payment systems.
Regulations on Lending Conduct
Banks and non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) were previously not permitted to levy foreclosure charges/pre-payment penalties on any floating rate term loan permitted to individual borrowers with or without co-obligant(s), for purposes other than business.
IND RBI has now decided to broaden the scope of such regulations to cover loans to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) extended by the regulated entities of IND RBI.
A draft circular in this regard shall be issued for public consultation.
Capital Raising Avenues
The initial set of guidelines on issue and regulation of share capital and securities for primary (urban) co-operative banks (UCBs) does not cover the newly-enabled capital-related provisions such as issuance of special shares, issuance of shares at a premium.
The Report of the expert committee on primary UCBs had provided broad guiding principles through its recommendations on these provisions.
A working group was constituted to further operationalize the recommendations.
Following these recommendations, a discussion paper on capital raising avenues for primary UCBs will be issued for eliciting feedback and suggestions from stakeholders.
Climate Risk Information System
IND RBI proposes to create a data repository, namely, the Reserve bank – climate risk information system (RB-CRIS), which consists of a web-based directory listing various data sources (meteorological, geospatial), and a data portal comprising of datasets.
The data portal will be made available only to regulated entities in a phased manner.
Payment Systems
Enhance the limits for UPI123Pay and UPI Lite, to encourage wider adoption of UPI.
Increase per-transaction limit of UPI123Pay to INR 10k, to widen its use-cases.
increase the UPI Lite wallet limit to INR 5k and per-transaction limit to INR 1k.
Proposed to introduce a beneficiary account name look-up facility to enable remitters in real time gross settlement system (RTGS) and national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) to verify the beneficiary account holder name before initiating funds transfer.
Nov. 2024 IND NPC Reminder
On Oct. 25, 2024, IND NPC reminded about guidelines on UPI features for UPI 123Pay.
IND NPC said members must immediately implement increased transaction limit.
Plus, enable Aadhaar one-time password (OTP) onboarding per NPC circulars, tag UPI 123Pay transactions as outlined within annexure 1 to this circular of (Oct. 25, 2024).
New members must comply with guidelines before going live on UPI 123Pay services.
All live 123Pay members must comply with the updated guidelines by Jan. 1, 2025.
Follows IND NPC Sep. 2021 updated on the rollout of the UPI ID Mapper, see #115143.
Document dated Oct. 25, 2024, received from IND NPC Nov. 7, summarized Nov. 11.
In Dec. 2024, IND RBI updated on offline retail payment pilot scheme, see #83701.
