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’.