New Delhi: In order to boost the digital payment ecosystem in the country, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday laid out guidelines to facilitate seamless payments among various mobile wallets. Mobile wallets such as Paytm and Mobikwik picked pace in the country soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation in late 2016 and gave people an option to pay their bills digitally. Currently, these mobile wallets do not allow users to transfer funds from one wallet to another. However, the roadmap proposed by the Central bank in 2017, interoperability of all KYC-compliant Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs) was to be enabled in three phases - interoperability of PPIs issued in the form of wallets through Unified Payments Interface (UPI), interoperability between wallets and bank accounts through UPI, and interoperability for PPIs issued in the form of cards through card networks

According to a report by news agency PTI, RBI has issued consolidated guidelines for enabling all phases “in order to prepare better for implementation of interoperability.” This means digital wallets, if they want to, can now use a state-backed payments network that makes peer-to-peer payments instant, to make wallets inter-operable, the Reserve Bank of India said on Tuesday. Speaking about the same with news agency Reuters, MobiKwik’s Co-Founder Upasna Taku said, “It's going to increase the growth rate of digital payments in even faster and, of course, create more business opportunities.”

Interoperability allows PPI issuers, system providers and system participants in different systems to undertake, clear and settle payment transactions across systems without participating in multiple systems. After RBI’s guidelines, popular mobile wallets including Paytm, MobiKwik, Oxigen, Paytm, ItzCash, and Ola Money can be inter-connected and users can transfer funds from one wallet to another.

Welcoming RBI’s guideline, Paytm COO Kiran Vasireddy said, “It is a great step for the payments ecosystem in India. With these set of guidelines, the PPI ecosystem will become stronger.”