The Reserve Bank of India today announced major policy decisions covering regulation, payments systems and consumer protection after its bi-monthly monetary policy review meeting.
The RBI plans to issue revised guidelines on the prudential framework for project finance applicable across banks, NBFCs and other regulated entities. This aims to strengthen oversight and address risks associated with long gestation project loans.
To harmonize norms, the RBI has allowed NBFCs in the middle and base layers to offset credit concentrations using credit risk transfer instruments, similar to upper layer NBFCs.
The RBI has also offered incentives for urban cooperative banks meeting priority sector lending targets by increasing the limit on gold loans under the bullet repayment scheme from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh.
An omnibus framework for recognizing self-regulatory organizations across RBI regulated entities is planned to promote industry compliance standards.
The Payments Infrastructure Development Fund scheme has been extended by 2 years till December 2025 to further accelerate deployment of payment acceptance infrastructure.
The Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) Scheme was operationalised by the Reserve Bank in January 2021 for a period of three years.
"The objective was to incentivise the deployment of payment acceptance infrastructure such as physical Point of Sale (PoS), Quick Response (QR) codes in tier-3 to tier-6 centres, north eastern states and Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. Beneficiaries of PM SVANidhi Scheme in Tier-1 and 2 centres were later included in August 2021. As at end-August 2023, over 2.66 crore new touch points have been deployed under the Scheme," it said.
The PIDF scheme has been expanded to include PM Vishwakarma scheme beneficiaries across all centres, similar to the earlier inclusion of PM SVANidhi beneficiaries.
To improve convenience, new facilities will be introduced for card-on-file tokenization directly through card issuers along with merchant apps/websites.
"At present, Card-on-File(CoF) token can only be created through merchant’s application or webpage. It is now proposed to introduce CoF token creation facilities directly at the issuer bank level. This measure will enhance convenience for cardholders to get tokens created and linked to their existing accounts with various ecommerce applications. Instructions in this regard will be issued separately," the central bank said.
The RBI will also issue a harmonized Master Direction on the Internal Ombudsman mechanism applicable across regulated entities. This aims to strengthen the internal grievance redressal system based on learnings over the years.