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CHENNAI, Dec. 2

THE Reserve Bank of India has mooted the idea of giving each bank customer a unique identification number. When a person becomes a bank customer for the first time, he will be given this number. That number will identify him even if he becomes a customer of other bank(s).

This initiative would prevent a defaulter in one bank, from transacting business with other banks.

However, to bring this measure, it would be necessary to get the approval of more than one government department, particularly the Ministry of Home Affairs. Therefore, it would be quite some time before this measure is brought in, Mr S. Ganesh Kumar, General Manager, Reserve Bank of India, has said.

Addressing a seminar on `Payment/settlement system and digital signature', organised here by the Indian Bank, Mr Ganesh Kumar, said that the advent of technology would be good for the customers, but a challenge for the bankers.

He said that the RBI would like to see a system in which funds get transferred across accounts in real time and a customer would not need to worry about a cheque not being honoured.

Mr Ganesh Kumar said that the banks should pay/credit the customer's account once he presents a cheque and it would be up to the banking system to collect it from the person who writes the cheque. He observed that only three per cent of all the cheques presented are returned, all the rest are passed. But, for this `3 per cent', all the cheques go through a time consuming process for settlement.

Ultimately, the system should make transactions as cashless as possible. For example, in a transaction at a shop, it should be possible for money to be transferred from the purchaser's `smart card' to the shopkeeper's `smart card', he said.

He said that the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) that the RBI is bringing in would facilitate real time transfer of large value funds. Under this, large fund transfers (say, through cheques) will be settled between banks, individually transaction by transaction, rather than by netting off all transactions.

The RBI would facilitate this by giving banks a temporary, intra-day overdraft to a bank, which might need it, in order to ensure liquidity.

Mr Ganesh Kumar said that a legislation such as `Payment and Settlement Systems Act' would happen in course of time.

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