Offline Payment aggregators to be under regulatory scheme: RBI proposes amendments to PA regime
Archisman Bhattacharjee and Manisha Ghosh I finserv@vinodkothari.com
Introduction
On April 16, 2024, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued Draft Directions on the Regulation of Payment Aggregators (PAs) (‘Draft PA Directions’) serving two primary purposes:
- Regulating Offline PAs i.e. PAs operating at physical points of sale, an area previously not covered by existing regulations.
- Amendments to the current guidelines concerning Payment Aggregators, primarily intended to extend the scope of the extant regulations to offline PAs; however, having several additionalities such as PA’s due diligence on the merchants, ongoing merchant monitoring based on business profile, disallowing payment to any other account on specific directions from the merchant etc.