To senior citizens whose children live abroad The Reserve Bank of India has given a good news. As the problem that senior citizens living in India and having NRI children face issues regarding payments of bills, utilities and others.
In order to assist Indian families living abroad, the RBI has now proposed that the Bharat Bill Payment System be enabled to accept cross border inward bill payments on their behalf. This will enable non-resident Indians to undertake bill payments utility, education and other such payment on behalf of their families in India.
The RBI said in a statement announcing its Monetary Policy Committee meet decisions “BBPS is currently accessible only for residents in India. To facilitate Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) undertake utility, education and other bill payments on behalf of their families in India, it is proposed to enable BBPS to accept cross-border inward payments. This will also benefit payment of bills of any biller onboarded on the BBPS platform in an interoperable manner.”
The central bank said Over 20,000 billers are part of the system, and more than eight crore transactions are processed on a monthly basis. NRIs will now have access to all of them. Instructions regarding the operations, applicability and others will be announced soon.
As announced in the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies issued on August 05, 2022, RBI has issued directions issued under Section 10(4) and Section 11(1) of the FEMA, 1999 to allow foreign inward remittances received under the Rupee Drawing Arrangement (RDA), to be transferred to the KYC compliant bank account of the biller (beneficiary) through Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS).
Sudhir Sharma, senior partner at DSK Legal said, “The announcement by RBI to allow NRIs to pay bills for their family members in India directly on BBPS, depicts a further liberalisation measure on cross-border payment transactions front. Rather than transmitting money to Indian accounts and using it to pay such bills, NRIs will be able to directly pay such bills on BBPS. This will enhance ease and reduce delayed payments, thereby benefitting the economic ecosystem as a whole.”
“The primary function of BBPS is to enable non-resident Indians to make direct payments of various utilities such as water bill, electricity bill or telecom for their respective families in India via the BBPS platform. The BBPS platform will be the facilitator for the payments between the individuals utilising the service, the service providers and the ones making the payment,” BBS will act as a bridge between NRIs and their families when it comes to make payments easily.
Suvigya Awasthy, associate partner at PSL Advocates & Solicitors said “Thus, BBPS will be a bridge between the non-resident Indians, their families in India and the service providers, ensuring all stakeholders benefit from the same.”
Arrangement – Direct to Account Facility’, foreign inward remittances received under Rupee Drawing Arrangement (RDA) can be transferred to the KYC compliant beneficiary bank accounts through electronic mode, such as, NEFT, IMPS, etc.
Pranay Jhaveri, managing director – India and South Asia, Euronet Worldwide said “This is a step to empower and enable the large Indian diaspora to support their families especially senior citizens by taking away the burden of mundane and recurring bill payments. It is a step in the right direction to continue growing BBPS with a new use case as it may get additional foreign exchange into the country. We will have to await specific directions in terms of implementation and compliance.”
