Mobile wallet accounts limit raised to Rs 2 lakh, know how your mobile wallet may soon turn into a bank

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has doubled the limit of maximum balance that an individual customer can hold with Payments Banks. Additionally, while your mobile wallets may soon turn into a bank as they will be allowed to transfer and get funds, just like you do with your bank account.

Henceforth, Payments Banks can hold a maximum balance of Rs 2 lakh per individual customers at the end of the day.

To promote optimal utilisation of payment instruments (like cards, wallets etc.), and given the constraint of scarce acceptance infrastructure (like PoS devices, ATMs, QR codes, bill-payment touch points, etc.), Reserve Bank of India has been stressing on the benefits of interoperability amongst the issuing and acquiring entities alike, banks or non-banks.

“The Master Direction on Issuance and Operation of PPIs dated October 11, 2017 laid down a road-map for a phased implementation of interoperability amongst PPIs issued by banks and non-banks. Thereafter, the guidelines issued in October 2018 enabled interoperability, albeit on a voluntary basis, insofar as the PPIs were full-KYC (they met all Know Your Customer requirements). Despite a passage of two years, migration towards full-KYC PPIs, and therefore interoperability, is not significant,” RBI said.

It is, therefore, proposed to make interoperability mandatory for full-KYC PPIs and for all acceptance infrastructure. To incentivise the migration of PPIs to full-KYC, it is proposed to increase the limit of outstanding balance in such PPIs from the current level of Rs 1 lakh to to Rs 2 lakh, an RBI statement said.