New Delhi: Lobby Group Payments Council of India (PCI) has recommended the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Committee on Deepening of Digital Payments (CDDP) to permit non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to issue physical or digital credit cards. The industry body made the suggestion to speed up the growth of the digital payments ecosystem in the country.
According to the PCI, the credit card is one of the most important tools to develop India's digital payments. Hence the council is betting big on the credit card issuance framework by NBFCs, PCI said in a statement. Although the credit bureau has over 400 million customer records while about 40 million credit cards have been issued so far, the market for credit card growth remains untapped.
Due to technological challenges in the central KYC registry system (cKYC), the council's chairman Vishwas Patel also asked for the formation of a KYC bureau. "This is to improve customer acquisition cost across payment services besides avoiding cost duplication," said Patel.
Even though cash remains the preferred payment option in the country, the council proposed that all digital platforms, especially Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs), be permitted to seamlessly issue and allow payments and remittance transactions below Rs 50,000 with just minimum mobile verified KYC.
Speaking about the country's digital growth ahead, PCI's Chairman Emeritus Naveen Surya said: "Cash still reigns supreme and to digitize the cash use in the country we need to build a robust digital payments ecosystem besides enhancing customer faith in the industry."