RBI sets up digital payments panel led by Nandan Nilekani

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced setting up of a committee for deepening digital transactions led by Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The five-member panel will submit a report within 90 days of its first meeting on various aspects of digital transactions including financial inclusion, according to a release by RBI.

Apart from Nilekani, the committee comprises former bureaucrats and institutional heads. Members are H R Khan, former deputy governor of RBI; Kishore Sansi, former managing director and chief executive of Vijaya Bank; and Aruna Sharma, former secretary of ministries of information technology and steel. Another member on the panel is Sanjay Jain, chief innovation officer at Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM-Ahmedabad.

According to the release by RBI, the committee will be required to review the existing status of payments digitisation in the country and identify gaps in the ecosystem and ways to bridge them. It will also look at other aspects of digital payments including their role in financial inclusion, safety and security, road map for increasing customer confidence and strategy for deepening digital payments. The committee will also undertake a cross-country analysis to identify best practices to accelerate digitisation of the economy.

The move comes at a time when transactions using mobile wallets have declined month-on-month for November 2018, both in value and volume, following a September judgment by the Supreme Court barring the use of Aadhaar for e-KYC by private entities. Aadhaar-based e-KYC is one way to onboard new users.

The trend emerges despite RBI guidelines in October to allow seamless payments between mobile wallets.

RBI, on its part, is trying to push digital financial transactions. The central bank in December proposed setting up a grievance redressal scheme for digital financial transactions by January 2019.