Introduction: Needless to say, the central banks’ policy is promoting digital payment instruments and thereby reducing the use of paper cash. There are lots of benefi ts while an economy is accustomed to digital means of payment. To cater this the monetary policy of Fiscal Year (FY) 2019/20 included #127 “A policy of gradually reducing cash transactions will be adopted focusing on digitization and Fin-tech, thereby promoting payment through electronic means”. This policy is realised in terms of promoting digital transfer by strengthening licensed institutions as well as incentivising digital payments. On the following FY 2020/21 policy of establishing National Payment Switch (Policy #146) is stated and there are some visible progresses already in our ecosystem where Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL) introduced Retail Payment Switch (RPS), as the subcomponent of NPS, thereby enabling us to transfer/request fund between another ConnectIPS (cIPS) user, Mobile Banking user as well as PSP/wallet user too. NRB issued a framework/guideline to manage electronic payments made through Quick Response (QR) code, another major instrument of digital payment, NepalQR Standardization Framework and Guidelines. This guideline is aimed to streamline diversifi ed QR codes introduced in our system so that they are able to operate with each other (interoperable). To ensure the interoperability, NRB also issued a directive later mandating the industry players to accept co-existence of each other and accept payment to/from each other.
Published On: Sanjivani (A peer reviewed journal of Deposit and Credit Guarantee Fund), 2079
Full Article: In DCGF Website
