Last October, Reserve Bank of India had announced that it would soon introduce interoperability guidelines for e-wallets. As per the latest reports, the guidelines might be released in a month’s time that would be a game-changing decision for Paytm and other digital wallets.
Reportedly, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has cleared the safety security aspects of the process. It’s reported that RBI is working on a few final issues before releasing official guidelines for the wallet interoperability.
The wallet interoperability would allow users to carry out transactions between different digital wallets. This is expected to bring a paradigm shift in the digital payment industry.
As these e-wallets have already been brought under the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements for their customers, the central Bank is anticipated to be waiting for all the market players to develop the same level of technical capabilities.
The top Executives of these wallet companies are quite eager for the release of the guidelines and are hoping that the RBI’s decision would boost their business. According to RBI’s direction announced in October, digital wallets are required to adopt a common standard followed by which the interoperability will be introduced for all full-KYC wallets in phases.
Meanwhile, several wallet companies like Paytm, FreeCharge, and MobiKwik have joined the UPI bandwagon. These companies have moved on to the interoperable system of UPI by serving as a third party service provider for banks.
However, after the release of the guidelines, it might take an additional time of 3-6 months for the companies to operate on the new platform. This is because until now these wallets have been competing with each other but now they will have to interact with each other and find a way to work on the interoperability together.
