The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued guidelines for digital wallet companies to surrender their licences and details how wallets will have to refund money to their users. The RBI said that it has been receiving requests from prepaid payment instrument (PPI) issuers and overseas money transfer operators for surrendering and canceling of their licences on a voluntary basis. So far, the RBI says that it is in the process of winding down three wallet providers - Beam Money, Done Card Utility and OSS Payment solutions. In July 2013, Beam Money surrendered its licence to the RBI and at the time Anand Shrivastav, Chairman at Beam Money told MediaNama that semi closed prepaid wallets did not make financial sense to the company. One of the major drawback, he said, was that it did not allow users to withdraw money from the wallet, which is important for a consumer company. Kaizen that operated RFID based SmartCards had its revocation order issued in April 2011. The guidelines For payment operators who have started their operations: The following documents need to be submitted to the RBI for winding down operations A request in writing by its authorised signatory, along with a copy of a board resolution, indicating its intent and the reason for such voluntary surrender of certificate of authorization. A statement by its chartered accountant giving the number and amount of outstanding wallets. Such statement should also indicate the name of its Escrow account details, outstanding Escrow amount, and liabilities to merchants. A memorandum indicating the process to be…
