'Positive pay system' will take off from Jan 1

Mumbai: To keep a check on banking frauds, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has introduced the 'positive pay system' for cheque payments. In this system, there will be a requirement of re-confirmation of the key details for the payments above Rs 50,000. This rule of a positive pay system will come into effect from January 1, 2021.

Confirming the development, a senior State Bank of India official told Bizz Buzz on condition of anonymity that "We have asked our customers to keep five things in mind under the 'positive pay system'. They include reconfirmation of account no, cheque no, cheque date, payee's name and the cheque amount for any transaction above Rs 50,000 from January 01, 2021."

The positive pay system facility can be availed by the account holders of their choice. Banks may think about making it necessary for cheques with amounts of Rs 5 lakh and higher in future.

There are many more changes that are likely to take place in the banking system from the beginning of the new year.

An official of HDFC Bank said that under the new regime, the bank will ask the customer to reconfirm these details through e-mail to the bank so as to reassure about the cheque has been issued by him only.

Normally, the fraud takes place in the case of high value cheques only and hence the new system, he added.

From January 1, the RBI has said to increase the limits from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 for contactless card transactions and e-mandates for regularly occurring transactions through cards and UPI. The move by RBI is to enhance digital payment. This will ensure a safe and secure manner, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the RBI Governor, Shaktikanta Das has made it clear that this will depend on the mandate and discretion of customers.

Again, from January 1, 2021, the users may need to pay additional charges while making transactions from Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and Phone Pay. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will impose an additional charge on UPI payment service (UPI payment) run by a third-party app beginning from January 1. NPCI has applied a 30 per cent cap on third-party apps starting from new year. Paytm will also need to pay this charge.

This limit will be calculated on the basis of total volume of transactions processed in UPI during the preceding three months (on a rolling basis).The idea was to protect the payments channel from risks as it grows in scale.

"With UPI reaching 2 billion transactions a month and with potential for future growth, it has issued a cap of 30 per cent of total volume of transactions processed in UPI, applicable on all Third-Party App Providers (TPAPs). This will be effective from January 1, 2021. It will help address the risks and protect the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up," the NPCI had recently said in a statement.