To improve accessibility and monitoring of digital payments, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has created a framework to geotag payment system touchpoints.
The RBI said: “To achieve this objective, it is imperative that robust payment acceptance infrastructure is available and accessible across the length and breadth of the country.”
Geotagging payment system touchpoints will allow for accurate availability monitoring of payment acceptance infrastructures, such as Points of Sale (PoS) terminals and Quick Response (QR) codes. Such monitoring would let policymakers intervene to improve payment infrastructure distribution.
Banks and non-bank payment system operators (PSOs) will acquire and preserve geographic coordinates for all payment touchpoints, according to the framework.
They will keep track of all payment touchpoints around the country, including merchant information and payment acceptance infrastructure details, in a register.
Geotagging information will be submitted to the RBI 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.
The RBI said: “The date from which the information shall be reported to Reserve Bank shall, however, be advised in due course.”
On October 8, 2021, the Monetary Policy Statement 2020-21 announced the release of a methodology for geotagging physical payment acceptance infrastructure to help with the nuanced spread of acceptance infrastructure and universal access to digital payments.
Additionally, it said: “This would complement the Payments Infrastructure Development Fun framework by better deployment of acceptance infrastructure and wider access to digital payments.”
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