In a bid to give a push to digital payments, the Reserve Bank on Friday announced a slew of measures including enhancing the limit for contactless card transactions to Rs 5,000 and making RTGS transaction facility available round the clock from December 14.
The RBI has also decided to grant licence to entities operating payments systems on a perpetual basis, and permitted companies to reapply for licence after one year of rejection of their application or revocation of their licence.
These were part of the announcements made by RBI Governor Shaktikant Das earlier in the day after the meeting of the central bank’s rate setting panel -- Monetary Policy Committee. Now the central bank has issued circulars notifying the announcements.
On 24x7 availability of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) System, the RBI said it has been decided “to make RTGS available round the clock on all days of the year with effect from 00:30 hours on December 14, 2020”.
RTGS System is used for high value transactions. The NEFT System of payments is already available round the clock.RTGS will be available for customers and inter-bank transactions round the clock, except for the interval between ‘end-of-day’ and ‘start-of-day’ processes, whose timings would be duly broadcasted through the RTGS system.
The RBI also decided to increase the limit for contactless card transactions to Rs 5,000 from Rs 2,000 at Point of Sale (PoS) terminals from January 1, 2021 in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and feedback from stakeholders.
Earlier in the day, the RBI Governor had announced that per transaction limit for Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) relaxation for contactless card transactions will be increased.
“Accordingly, given the sufficient protection available to users, it has been decided to increase the per transaction limit to Rs 5,000,” said one of the circulars, adding that all other requirements, including the discretion of cardholder to use contactless or contact mode of transaction, would continue to remain applicable.