The Reserve Bank of India today issued final guidelines to enable interoperability between pre-paid instruments such as mobile wallets. Digital wallet companies, if they so desire, can now use a state-backed payments network that makes peer-to-peer payments instant, to make wallets inter-operable, the RBI said on Tuesday.

"Interoperability of all KYC-compliant PPIs was to be enabled in three phases - (i) interoperability of PPIs issued in the form of wallets through Unified Payments Interface (UPI), (ii) interoperability between wallets and bank accounts through UPI, and (iii) interoperability for PPIs issued in the form of cards through card networks," RBI said in the notification.

In its guidelines, RBI said that interoperability across PPIs shall be enabled through UPI.

The pre-paid cards have to be affiliated to the authorised card networks.

PPI issuers operating exclusively in specific segments like Meal, Gift and MTS can also implement interoperability.

The pre-paid cards have to be EMV Chip and PIN compliant for interoperability.

Nearly 50 companies hold prepaid payment instrument (PPI, or digital wallet) licence.

Unlike expectations, RBI has not imposed any minimum net worth requirement on mobile wallets to become interoperable.

As per Reuters, this will boost the use of digital payments in the country.

Mobile wallets such as the one run by SoftBank and Alibaba-backed Paytm have become popular in India after a ban on high-value currency in late 2016 pushed people to pay digitally. Mobile wallets currently do not allow users to send or receive money from a wallet run by another firm.

"It's going to increase the growth rate of digital payments in India even faster and, of course, create more business opportunities," said Upasna Taku, co-Founder of fintech firm MobiKwik, which operates a wallet.

Digital payments in India are projected to grow five-fold to about $1 trillion by 2023, according to Credit Suisse.

With Reuter Inputs