The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked commercial banks as well as payment system operators (PSO) to geotag payment touch points like branches and automated teller machines while announcing a framework for Geo-tagging of Payment System Touch Points.
Geo-tagging refers to capturing the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) of payment touch points deployed by merchants to receive payments from their customers.
“Geo-tagging has various benefits, such as, provide insights on regional penetration of digital payments; monitor infrastructure density across different locations; identify scope for deploying additional payment touch points; facilitate focused digital literacy programmes,” RBI said in a notification.
RBI said that capturing the accurate location of existing payment system touch points / acceptance infrastructure is essential to upscaling and chalking out intervention strategies. “This requirement can be effectively facilitated by geo-tagging of payment touch points,” it said.
Digital payment transactions carried out by customers using payment touch points use two broad categories of i) physical infrastructure - Banking infrastructure comprising bank branches, offices, extension counters, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) micro-ATMs used by Business Correspondents (BCs), and ii) payment acceptance infrastructure comprising Points of Sale (PoS) terminals, Quick Response (QR) codes deployed by banks / non-bank Payment System Operators (PSOs), etc.
“All banks / Non-bank PSOs shall report information on payment touch points to the Reserve Bank through the Centralised Information Management System (CIMS) of RBI,” the notification said.
The regulator further said banks / non-bank PSOs will be solely responsible for ensuring data pertaining to payment touch points deployed and the merchants acquired / on-boarded by them is up to date and accurate. The date from which the banks and PSOs need to report the information to RBI be advised later.