RBI to set up a 24x7 helpline for digital payment services

RBI has announced certain measures of protection of common bank account holders in today's monetary policy statement. It includes setting up of 24*7 helpline for digital payment services, integrated ombudsman scheme, CTS across all bank branches and allowing retail investors to open Gilt accounts with RBI.

The government is encouraging various modes of digital payments. As a result, digital transactions have registered massive growth in recent times. But some users face difficulties during transaction has to suffer a lot for grievance redressal.

The Payment Systems Vision document of RBI envisages setting up a 24x7 helpline for addressing customer queries in respect of various digital payment products.

The helpline will, in addition to building trust and confidence, also reduce expenditure on both financial and human resources, otherwise incurred for addressing queries and grievances.

The major payment system operators would be required to facilitate setting-up of a centralised industry-wide 24x7 helpline for addressing customer queries in respect of various digital payment products and give information on available grievance redress mechanisms by September 2021.

Going forward, RBI is also considering for facility of registering and resolving the customer complaints through the helpline.

The Cheque Truncation System (i.e CTS) is in use since 2010 and presently covers around 1.5 lakh branches. But RBI has observed that about 18,000 bank branches are still outside any formal clearing arrangement. So, RBI has proposed to bring all such branches under the CTS clearing mechanism by September 2021.

Financial consumer protection has always been the priority of the central bank. As an alternate dispute resolution mechanism, RBI has three Ombudsman for banking, Non-Banking Financial Companies and Digital transactions.

To make the alternate dispute redressal mechanism simpler and more responsive to the customers of regulated entities, RBI has been decided to implement, 'One Nation One Ombudsman' approach for grievance redressal. The Integrated Ombudsman Scheme will be rolled out in June 2021.

Encouraging retail participation in the Government securities market has been the focus area of the Government of India and the RBI.

In order to increase retail participation in government securities and to improve ease of access, RBI has decided to move beyond the aggregator model and provide retail investors online access to the government securities market along with the facility to open their gilt securities account (i.e. retail direct) with the RBI.