Small-Value Digital Payments in Offline Mode 

Small-Value Digital Payments in Offline Mode 

Part of: Prelims and GS-III Economy 

Context The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come out with the framework for facilitating small-value digital payments in offline mode, a move that would promote digital payments in semi-urban and rural areas.

Key takeaways 

• The framework incorporates feedback received from the pilot experiments on offline transactions conducted in different parts of the country between September 2020 and June 2021.
• An offline digital payment does not require Internet or telecom connectivity.
• Under this new framework, such payments can be carried out face-to-face (proximity mode) using any channel or instrument like cards, wallets and mobile devices.
• Such transactions would not require an Additional Factor of Authentication. 
• Since the transactions are offline, alerts (by way of SMS and / or e-mail) will be received by the customer after a time lag.
• There is a limit of ₹200 per transaction and an overall limit of ₹2,000 until the balance in the account is replenished. The RBI said the framework took effect ‘immediately’.