The RBI will soon be able to monitor fund transfers almost in real time through the newly launched Banking Connect net banking platform, reducing the current data lag of up to a week or more.
Mumbai: Banking Connect, a newly launched net banking platform, will enable the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to monitor fund transfers with significantly shorter delays, a senior NPCI Bharat BillPay (NBBL) official said on Thursday.
NBBL expects the number of bills processed each month to increase almost fourfold to 1 billion within four years, compared with the current 260 million, managing director and chief executive Noopur Chaturvedi told reporters.
Chaturvedi said faster visibility of transactions on the Banking Connect platform will help the regulator track transfers to sensitive sectors, including cryptocurrency and online gaming. At present, it can take banks a week, and in some cases up to a year, to share net banking transaction data with the RBI, she noted.
The platform is also designed to curb fraud by enabling quicker action against suspicious transactions. However, social engineering scams, where customers are tricked into sharing confidential information, will remain difficult to eliminate fully, she added.
Banking Connect was developed to plug gaps in the existing payments ecosystem, particularly in merchant payments, and features interoperability and a mobile-first approach.
Six banks and several payment aggregators are already part of the platform, and efforts are underway to onboard the top five banks by net banking volume within a month, Chaturvedi said.
Launched last month, the platform has been created by NBBL, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
According to Chaturvedi, India currently has 80 million net banking customers carrying out around 300 transactions a month, valued at more than ₹6 lakh crore. While UPI adoption has accelerated, net banking growth remains in single digits, she said.
In terms of bill payments, about 70 million households currently use the service. NBBL aims to increase this to over 135 million, roughly half of Indian households.
PTI inputs
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