RBI Allows Offline Digital Payments without Internet and Telecom Connectivity!

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on 3rd Jan 2022, a framework for carrying out Offline Digital Payments in India. According to it, you can use any channel or instrument like Cards, Wallets, Mobiles, etc for offline payments. Also, the sender and receiver should be in proximity i.e. face2face to carryout this type of transaction. Thus, now you will be able to do transactions without an internet connection and telecom connectivity.

RBI has asked authorized payment system operators (PSOs) and payment system participants (PSPs) including banks to comply with this framework for enabling offline payment transfers. Thus, soon Paytm, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, PhonePe, PayZapp, and others will come up with their offline payment services.

You can do an offline payment of max ₹200 per transaction. The maximum amount you can use for offline payments is capped to ₹2000 per payment instrument. If you want to use more than this then you need to shift to online payments with additional factor authentication (AFA). 

It is not compulsory for PSOs and PSPs to send every transaction alert immediately via SMS. However, they need to show users a statement kind of thing. Also, they will be responsible for technical and transactional security. 

This move by RBI is mainly to facilitate digital/cashless transactions in rural and semi-urban regions of the country because Internet is still scarce there. With telecom operators such as Jio, Vi, and Airtel increasing their tariffs by 25-30%, people using internet just for small online transactions might benefit from this scheme.

What are your views on this Offline Digital Payments service? Will it prove fruitful for urban area users? Please do share with us below. You can also read our article on 7 Easy Steps to make an Online Payment without Internet.