As we come a day closer to Union Budget announcement by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Payments Council of India (PCI) has charted out its following budget expectations. Watal Committee Report PCI wants the government to "review update on" (Editor: Which is it: review or update on?) the Watal committee recommendations for digital Payments in India and accelerate the implementation of the same. The report was brought out to push for a comprehensive overhaul of the regulation of digital payments in India. (Read its list of recommendations here). In June last year, MediaNama also reported about the delay in implementation of the recommendations, and it looks like it will take some more time, if at all. We still have nothing on ensuring interoperability and improving governance at NPCI and addressing the RBI’s lack of neutrality. 100% digital KYC process The payments council said that even though government and financial sector regulators have allowed digital process like Aadhaar eKYC, digital signature etc, various rules make it compulsory to still take physical documents within a year for KYC or even execute various documents in physical as some regulations and legal requirements make it compulsory to keep physical documents. It wants government and regulators to show full faith and confidence in 100% digital process and that there should be no additional need to have physical documentation to be obtained additionally in a year. Minimal processes for using wallets PCI said that while all commerce transactions are allowed in our country upto Rs 49999 with no process, KYC or any other formality by…
