Non-Resident Indians will soon be able to use Bharat Bill Payment System to pay utility bills and education fees on behalf of their family members in India, the Reserve Bank said. The Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) is an interoperable platform for standardise bill payments.
Over 20,000 billers are part of the system, and more than 8 crore transactions are process on a monthly basis.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that BBPS has transform the bill payment experience for users in India and it is now propose to enable the system to accept cross-border inward bill payments.
Shaktikanta Das Said :
“This will enable Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to undertake bill payments for utility, education and other such payments on behalf of their families in India. This will greatly benefit the senior citizens in particular,”
Shaktikanta Das said while announcing the bi-monthly monetary policy.
In a statement, the RBI said the decision will also benefit payment of bills of any biller onboard on the BBPS platform in an interoperable manner.
The central bank will be shortly issuing necessary instructions in this regard.
Governor also announce a committee to study the possibility of an alternate benchmark to Mumbai Interbank Outright Rate (MIBOR) based overnight index swap (OIS) contracts, which are the most widely use interest rate derivatives (IRDs) in the onshore market.
The usage of MIBOR-based derivative contracts has increase with steps taken by the Reserve Bank to diversify the participant base and facilitate the introduction of new IRD instruments.
At the same time, the MIBOR benchmark rate, calculate based on call money deals execute on the NDS-call platform in the first hour after market opening, is base on a narrow window of transactions, the central bank said.
Internationally, there has a shift to alternate benchmark rates with wider participant bases (beyond banks) and higher liquidity.
The RBI also decide that Standalone Primary Dealers (SPDs), who are also market-makers like banks, will also be permit to undertake Foreign Currency Settle Overnight Index Swap (FCS-OIS) transactions directly with non-residents and other market-makers.
In February 2021, banks in India were permit to undertake transactions in the offshore FCS-OIS market with non-residents and other market-makers.
This was permit with a view to removing the segmentation between onshore and offshore OIS markets and improving the efficiency of price discovery.
