RBI sets Rs 345 crore corpus for developing payment infrastructure in rural India

The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday announced the operationalization of the Payment Investment Development Fund (PIDF) with an initial corpus of Rs 345 crore for three years – extendable up to an additional two more years.

The objective of PIDF is to increase the number of acceptance devices multi-fold in the country, the central bank said in a notification.

“The Scheme is expected to benefit the acquiring banks / non-banks and merchants by lowering overall acceptance infrastructure cost,” RBI said.


The fund will be used for adding 30 lakh digital payments touch points which would include 10 lakh physical and 20 lakh digital payment acceptance devices every year with a special focus on tier 3 to tier 6 regions and the north-eastern states.

B P Kanungo, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India is the chairman managing the fund, according to the central bank.

Sunil Mehta, Chief Executive, Indian Banks’ Association, D Nageswara Rao, Chief General Manager, DFIBT, NABARD, Dilip Asbe, Chief Executive Officer, National Payments Corporation of India and Vishwas Patel, Chairman, Payments Council of India are others among the nine-member committee.