RBI forms digital payments committee, appoints Nandan Nilekani as Chairman

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on Tuesday that it was constituting of a ‘high-level committee for deepening of digital payments’. Former UIDAI chairman and Infosys Co-founder Nandan Nilekani as the Chairman of the five-member committee.

According to the RBI, the committee's aim is to encourage the digitisation of payments and enhance financial inclusion through digitisation.

As a part of the new role, the committee has been mandated to:

• Review the existing status of digitisation of payments in the country,
• Identify the current gaps in the ecosystem and suggest ways to bridge these,
• Assess the current levels of digital payments in financial inclusion,
• Undertake cross-country analysis with a view to identifying best practices that can be adopted in India to accelerate digitisation of the economy and financial inclusion through greater use of digital payments,
• Suggest measures to strengthen the safety and security of digital payments,
• Provide a roadmap for increasing customer confidence and trust while accessing financial services through digital modes, and
• Suggest a medium-term strategy for deepening of digital payments, amongst other things.

With respect to these responsibilities, the committee shall submit its report within a period of 90 days from the date of its first meeting.

Apart from Nandan Nilekani, the committee includes H.R. Khan, Former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Kishore Sansi, Former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Vijaya Bank; Aruna Sharma, Former Secretary, Ministry of Information Technology and Steel, and Sanjay Jain, Chief Innovation Officer at the Center for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad.

Digital payments in the country have witnessed an upward growth since demonetisation.

According to the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY), the number of digital payment transactions in the month of October, 2016 stood at 79.67 Cr. This has increased by 207 percent to 244.81 crore in August 2018.

On the other hand, the total value of transactions in October 2016 was Rs.108.7 lakh Crore which has increased by 88 percent to Rs. 204.86 lakh crore in August, 2018.