Like any industry, the payments industry has responsible players and some who think it's the wild-west, said WorldLine India's Ramesh Narasimhan in an interview with MediaNama. "We need a self-regulatory body with teeth, that can take action against players and make them fall in line with the best practices," said Narasimhan, who is the head of digital commerce at WorldLine India. MediaNama recently reported that the Payments Council of India (PCI) is in the final stages of submitting an application to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a license to operate as a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) governing the digital payments ecosystem. The PCI, which operates under the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), will float a new not-for-profit entity that would serve as the SRO entity. Worldline India is a member of PCI. In the last few months, as reports of payment frauds, predatory lending apps and data leaks at major payment companies came to the fore, the regulator has been signalling that more needs to be done to regulate India's burgeoning fintech industry. "The payments space is a magnet for venture capital. So you have a lot of people coming into the payments space and all operators need to follow rules and guidelines. And sometimes it is the established players that suffer as a consequence of this. One classic example is the RBI's regulation which is withdrawing the ability of payment aggregators to keep a card on file from December 31, 2021. As a result, we have…
