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RBI Monetary Policy: RBI Raises Transaction Limit Under IMPS

The RBI will raise the per-transaction IMPS limit to Rs 5 lakh from Rs 2 lakh.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Vehicles travel past the Reserve Bank of India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)</p></div>
Vehicles travel past the Reserve Bank of India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

The Reserve Bank of India will raise the transaction limit under the immediate payment service to Rs 5 lakh.

The per transaction limit on payments through the IMPS network, other than those done through the short message services and interactive voice response service route, will be raised, the central bank said as part of a statement on developmental and regulatory policies along with the monetary policy announcement.

"The per-transaction limit in IMPS, effective January 2014, is currently capped at Rs 2 lakh for channels other than SMS and IVRS. The per-transaction limit for SMS and IVRS channels is Rs 5,000," the RBI said.

The IMPS, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, is the technology on which the Unified Payments Interface was developed. It provides for real-time retail transactions, faster than the National Electronic Fund Transfer technology.

Other major announcements by the banking regulator include:

  • Extension of deadline for the Rs 10,000-crore on-tap special long-term repo operations for small finance banks from Oct. 31 to Dec .31.

  • Introduce a framework for offline retail digital payments across the country, after successful pilot tests were conducted between September 2020 and June 2021.

  • Proposal to lay down a framework for geo-tagging of physical payment acceptance infrastructure such as point-of-sale terminals, quick response codes, among others, used by merchants.

  • Introduction of a fourth cohort, under the regulatory sandbox, on prevention and mitigation of financial frauds. Moreover, the first three cohorts, including retail payments, cross-border payments and micro, small and medium enterprises lending will accept on-tap applications.

  • Continuation of enhanced ways and means advances for states till March 31, 2022 from current deadline of Sept. 30.

  • Continuation of the liberalised measures for states, introduced to deal with the pandemic such as enhancement of maximum number of days of overdraft in a quarter from 36 to 50 days and the number of consecutive days of OD from 14 to 21 days, up to March 31, 2022.

  • Bank lending toward registered non-bank finance companies, for on-lending to agriculture, MSME and housing sectors to continue attracting priority sector lending tag till March 31, 2022.

  • Introduction of the internal ombudsman scheme for certain categories of NBFCs which have higher customer interface. The IOS for NBFCs, which will be on the lines of IOS for banks and non-bank payment system participants, will require select NBFCs to appoint an internal ombudsman at the top of their internal grievance redress mechanism.