RBI Publishes Framework for Geo-Tagging of Payment System Touch Points

The central bank’s priority is to expand digital payments and provide equal access to all citizens.

To help monitor and ensure the availability of payment infrastructure, the Reserve Bank of India has released a framework for geotagging payment system touchpoints.

“The RBI is committed to deepening digital payments and providing equal access to all citizens of the country.” “It is critical that robust payment acceptance infrastructure is available and accessible across the length and breadth of the country to achieve this goal,” it said on Friday.

Geotagging payment system touchpoints will allow for accurate monitoring of payment acceptance infrastructure availability, such as Points of Sale (PoS) terminals and Quick Response (QR) codes. It went on to say that such monitoring would help policymakers optimize the distribution of payment infrastructure.

Banks and non-bank payment system operators (PSOs) will capture and maintain geographical coordinates for all payment touchpoints, according to the framework.

They will keep a registry of all payment touchpoints across the country, including merchant information and payment acceptance infrastructure details.

Geotagging data for PoS terminals such as mobile PoS, soft PoS, tablet PoS, desktop PoS, self-service kiosk PoS, Android-based PoS terminals, non-Android-based PoS terminals with GPRS SIM Card-embedded, non-Android-based PoS terminals with PSTN Line Connectivity, and paper-based and soft QR codes such as Bharat QR, UPI QR would be submitted to the RBI.

“However, the date from which the information shall be reported to the Reserve Bank will be advised in due course,” the RBI said.

On October 8, 2021, the Monetary Policy Statement 2020-21 announced the release of a framework for geotagging physical payment acceptance infrastructure to facilitate the nuanced spread of acceptance infrastructure and inclusive access to digital payments.

“By better deploying acceptance infrastructure and expanding access to digital payments, this would complement the Payments Infrastructure Development Fun framework,” it had said.