The Reserve Bank of India has released the framework for geotagging of payment system touchpoints to help monitor and ensure the availability of payment infrastructure.
“RBI is focused on deepening of digital payments and providing inclusive access to all citizens of the country. To achieve this objective, it is imperative that robust payment acceptance infrastructure is available and accessible across the length and breadth of the country,” it said on Friday.
Geotagging of payment system touchpoints will enable proper monitoring of payment acceptance infrastructure of availability, like Points of Sale (PoS) terminals, Quick Response (QR) codes. It further said that such monitoring would support policy intervention to optimise distribution of payment infrastructure.
As per the framework, banks and non-bank payment system operators (PSOs) will capture and maintain geographical coordinates for all payment touchpoints.
They will maintain a registry with accurate location of all payment touchpoints across the country, including merchant related information and payment acceptance infrastructure details.
Geotagging information would be submitted to the RBI for PoS terminals, including 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 date from which the information shall be reported to Reserve Bank shall, however, be advised in due course,” the RBI said.
The Monetary Policy Statement 2020-21 on October 8, 2021, had announced that a framework for geotagging of physical payment acceptance infrastructure would be released to facilitate the nuanced spread of acceptance infrastructure and inclusive access to digital payments.
“This would complement the Payments Infrastructure Development Fun framework by better deployment of acceptance infrastructure and wider access to digital payments,” it had said.