50p 2017

We’ll take you through the highlights and lowlights of the “Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem” delivered by the Committee on Digital Payments (a.k.a. the Watal Committee) released in December 2016. We’ll briefly present some of the Committee’s rationale & thinking as set out in the text of the report, and conduct a whistle stop tour of the 13 recommendations made.

The Report’s recommendations could have far-reaching impacts on Indian financial systems design, particularly for the regulatory architecture and the operation of payment systems in the country -- including (1) the set-up of an independent “Payments Regulatory Board” within the RBI, (2) large scale amendments to the main Payments legislation, the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007, and (3) several measures to Government around incentivising digital payments by absorbing costs into the system.

Outline

We’ll briefly present some of the Committee’s rationale & thinking as set out in the text of the report, and conduct a whistle stop tour of the 13 recommendations made.

Speaker bio

Malavika Raghavan (Project Head, Future of Finance Initiative). Bio available at http://foundation.ifmr.co.in/about-us/ (see “Team”)