The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced its ‘Payments Vision 2028’, outlining a roadmap to strengthen and expand India’s rapidly growing digital payments ecosystem.
About Payments Vision 2028
- It is a strategic roadmap with 15 concrete initiatives to be rolled out through December 2028.
- Theme: ‘Shaping India’s Payment Frontier’
- Focus Areas: It focuses on user empowerment, safeguards against fraud, improving the efficiency of cross-border payment frameworks, and promoting ease of doing business
Key Features
- Shared responsibility framework: RBI will explore introducing a shared responsibility framework under which both the customer’s bank (issuer) and the beneficiary’s bank jointly bear the liability arising from unauthorised digital payment transactions.
- Benefit: This approach would incentivise both parties to implement robust fraud detection and prevention measures, and strengthen coordination for timely intervention.
- Trade Receivables Discounting Systems (TReDS): The RBI proposes full interoperability across TReDS platforms, along with factoring with recourse and inclusion of export MSME receivables, to create a more integrated, efficient, and competitive receivables discounting ecosystem for MSMEs.
- Electronic cheques: The central bank plans a comprehensive review of cheque design and security features to enhance uniformity, strengthen fraud prevention, and align with emerging processes, while adopting best practices across all cheque instruments.
- Payments Switching Service (PaSS): It allows customers to seamlessly migrate payment instructions when switching bank accounts, reducing friction and improving customer convenience.
- Enhanced User Controls: The proposal introduces a switch on/off facility for all digital payment modes, such as UPI and IMPS, similar to card controls, to help mitigate fraud and enhance user security.
- Cyber resilience and oversight: To enhance cyber security, a Cyber Key Risk Indicators (KRI) framework will be introduced for non-bank Payment System Operators, enabling continuous monitoring and early warning signals for potential risks.
- Cross-border payments push: A comprehensive review of the cross-border payments ecosystem is planned to identify regulatory and operational frictions and improve efficiency.
- The RBI will also publish periodic reports tracking transaction costs, speed, and global developments, while benchmarking India’s progress.
- To ease regulatory processes, a single-window authorisation mechanism under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act and FEMA is being examined.
- Encouraging innovation and competition: The Vision proposes recognising Small Payment System Providers (SPSPs) under a perpetual regulatory sandbox, allowing innovative players to scale before being brought under full regulation.
- In parallel, the RBI will explore developing an open and interoperable card payments ecosystem, focusing on tokenisation, orchestration, and transparent pricing.
- Data, AI, and research-led ecosystem: RBI has identified data and research as strategic priorities, proposing the creation of a unified, AI-enabled payments data repository to improve transparency, monitoring, and innovation.
- The central bank also plans to strengthen research and training capacity and deepen collaboration with domestic and global stakeholders.
- Regulatory expansion and identifiers: To improve risk management and traceability, RBI is exploring the introduction of a uniform Domestic Legal Entity Identifier (DLEI).
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Significance
- Transition to Financial Leadership: It facilitates a shift from financial inclusion to achieving global financial leadership in the payments ecosystem.
- Strengthening Digital Economy: It strengthens the digital economy by promoting innovation and expansion within the fintech ecosystem.
- Enhancing Trust and Security: It enhances trust, efficiency, and safety in payment systems through secure and resilient infrastructure.
- Support to MSMEs: It supports the growth and formalisation of MSMEs by improving access to efficient and reliable digital payment mechanisms.
About Trade Receivables e-Discounting System (TReDS)
- The Trade Receivables e-Discounting System (TReDS) is an electronic platform introduced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to facilitate the financing of trade receivables of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
- Examples of TReDS platforms:
- RXIL (Receivables Exchange of India Ltd.)
- M1xchange
- Invoicemart
- Key Features:
- Online platform: Enables MSMEs to upload invoices raised against buyers (corporates, PSUs, government entities).
- Auction-based financing: Multiple financiers (banks/NBFCs) bid to discount these invoices.
- Improved liquidity: MSMEs receive funds quickly instead of waiting for payment cycles.
- Lower financing cost: Competitive bidding ensures better rates.
- Reduced credit risk: Financing is based on the creditworthiness of the buyer, not the MSME.
- Participants:
- MSME sellers
- Buyers (corporates, PSUs, government departments)
- Financiers (banks and NBFCs)
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28 Mar 2026
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