RBI proposes Bharat Bill Payment System for cross-border bill payments

The Reserve Bank of IndiaReserve Bank of India proposed the enabling of the Bharat Bill Payment System for cross-border bill payments, a move that could benefit senior citizens.

In his bi-monthly monetary policy statement for August, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said it was now proposed to allow the BBPS Bharat Bill Payment System to accept cross-border bill payments.

Non-Resident Indians NRIs will be able to take bill payments for utility, education and other such payments on behalf of their families in India, the RBI chief said.

People staying outside India NRIs can easily make their families' electricity, utility bills, and education payments back home once the process is complete.

This is a step to enable the large Indian diaspora to support their families especially senior citizens by taking away the burden of mundane and recurring bill payments. It is a step in the right direction to continue growing BBPS with a new use case as it may get additional foreign exchange into the country. Pranay Jhaveri, Managing Director of India South Asia, Euronet Worldwide, said that we will have to wait for specific directions in terms of implementation and compliance.

The BBPS is an interoperable platform for bill payments.

More than 20,000 billers are part of the system, and more than 8 crore transactions are processed monthly.

The key policy repo rate was lifted by the Reserve Bank by 50 basis points to 5.40 per cent, a third straight increase that took the key lending rate above the pre-pandemic level.

The rate hike came on the heels of high stubbornly high inflation, which stayed above RBI's upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent for the sixth consecutive month in July.