RBI To Increase Prepaid Wallet Limit To INR 20K, Aims To Ease Demonetisation For SMBs

In a new move by the Government to ease the ongoing drive towards demonetisation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has doubled the balance limit that can be kept in prepaid wallets and cards to INR 20,000. The move, as per an official statement, is aimed to support small merchants to facilitate and receive payments electronically.

The RBI has also stated that merchants can transfer up to INR 50,000 per month from these prepaid payment modes to their bank accounts. The relaxation will be applicable until December 30, 2016, as per a report by Business Standard.

In the past few months, the RBI has initiated a slew of services to smoothen investments in the country and to support the startup and digital ecosystem of the country. This includes approval to buy mutual funds via e-wallets; Paytm, PayU India, Oxigen to function as a consumer bill payment platform; guidelines  to regulate P2P lending platforms; favouring towards easier exit policy for startups etc.

In August 2016, the RBI also launched a website called Sachet, to further its efforts to curb illegal and unauthorised pooling of funds by unscrupulous firms. In October 2016, RBI drafted a new regulatory framework to manage investments in foreign technology funds by Indian parties that utilise the money in startups abroad.

Recently, a slew of initiatives have been launched by startups as well to counter the ongoing cash crunch in the country. Startups like Cash No Cash and Bookmychotu have come up with ways to ease the struggles with an ATM locater and a paid helper, respectively.

Ecommerce and payments platform, Paytm has also launched app-based POS to enable small and medium merchants to accept payments via credit and debit cards. It has also enabled real-time cashless toll collection across 40 highways in the country. Using Paytm, commuters can now pay toll charges instantly with their mwallet. Earlier this month, it enabled cashless payments in the unreserved bus booking sector.

The development was reported by Business Standard.