The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday released a framework for geo-tagging of payment system touch points, issuing instructions to bank and non bank payment system operators to maintain and submit to it the geographical locations of their touch points on a regular basis.
This is as per the announcement made in the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies released with the bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2021-22 on October 8, 2021 by the RBI.
Stressing that it was focused on deepening digital payments, the RBI said it was committed to helping ensure inclusive access to all citizens at a time when the payments ecosystem in India had witnessed rapid developments with a bouquet of payment systems, platforms, products and services available for consumers.
“To achieve this objective, it is imperative that robust payment acceptance infrastructure is available and accessible across the length and breadth of the country. Geo-tagging of payment system touch points will enable proper monitoring of availability of payment acceptance infrastructure like Points of Sale (PoS) terminals, Quick Response (QR) codes.
“In turn, such monitoring will support policy intervention to optimise distribution of payment infrastructure,” the RBI said.
Capturing the accurate location of existing payment system touch points / acceptance infrastructure (hereinafter referred to as payment touch points), was essential to upscaling and chalking out intervention strategies. This requirement could be effectively facilitated by geo-tagging of payment touch points, the RBI said.
Geo-tagging refers to capturing the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) of payment touch points deployed by merchants to receive payments from their customers.
It has various benefits, such as, providing insights on regional penetration of digital payments; monitoring infrastructure density across different locations; identifying scope for deploying additional payment touch points; and facilitating focused digital literacy programmes. Policy interventions for realising the above benefits would be facilitated by the information thus collected, the RBI added.
