Payments Operators To Set Up 24×7 Customer Helpline, RBI To Issue More Guidelines

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), during its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on February 5 (Friday), said payment system operators including the National Payments Corporation Of India and other major service providers would be required to set up centralised industry-wide 24×7 helpline for addressing customer queries. This after multiple complaints from the public domain about there being no grievance redressal mechanisms for digital payment products and services.

“Going forward, the facility of redress of customer grievances through the helpline shall be considered. This is envisaged to enhance consumer trust and confidence in the digital payments ecosystem,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das noted in his statement during the MPC meeting. 

RBI added that it would soon release guidelines on outsourcing payment and settlement-related services, by payment system operators (PSOs) and participants of authorised payment systems. The central bank said that the resilience of the digital payments ecosystem to operational risks needs to be constantly upgraded. The full list of such PSOs is available here and includes the likes of NPCI, card companies such as Mastercard, Visa and others. 

“To manage the attendant risks in outsourcing and ensure that a code of conduct is adhered to while outsourcing payment and settlement-related services, the Reserve Bank shall issue guidelines on outsourcing of such services by these entities,” it was said during the meeting.

RBI’s plans come just a month after one of India’s biggest data leaks in recent times when the data from 10 Cr digital payments transactions was leaked from the server of Bengaluru-based payments processor Juspay. The company operates payment gateways for major Indian as well as international companies such as Ola, Amazon and Uber in India. 

Days after the Juspay data leak, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reportedly reached out to key stakeholders, including the Payments Council of India (PCI), to inquire about the enforcement of new payment aggregator licensing norms that mandate storage of card data only by licensed payment aggregators and gateways. 

It was also reported that RBI would investigate vulnerabilities in the tech security infrastructure of the country’s burgeoning digital payments ecosystem players. 

A source told Inc42 at the time that RBI had also sent letters to all banks and prepaid payment instruments (PPI), instructing them to immediately notify the central bank if they notice a data breach on their servers.

Recently, data of 20 lakh credit score records were also leaked from Delhi NCR-headquartered neobanking startup Chqbook. 

Meanwhile, late last year, system outages for HDFC Bank and SBI’s Yono app had also left customers in a spot, as net banking and UPI services had crashed for few hours. 

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