Governor to chair RBI's new payments board

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said governor Sanjay Malhotra will chair the six-member Payments Regulatory Board (PRB), which will regulate the payment systems.

It will have three RBI members-deputy governor, executive director in charge of the Payment and Settlement Systems and the governor.

For the first time, the board will have two government nominees: the secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS) and the secretary of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY). In addition, Aruna Sundararajan, former MeitY secretary, has been appointed to the board.


The PRB will replace the existing Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems (BPSS), which was a five-member body chaired by the RBI governor but did not include government representatives. The RBI's principal legal adviser will continue as a permanent invitee to the board's meetings. The PRB shall ordinarily meet at least twice a year.

The creation of the board follows earlier deliberations wherein an inter-ministerial committee headed by the economic affairs secretary asked to propose amendments to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. In its draft report, the panel had recommended the setting up of an independent Payments Regulatory Board to handle payment-related issues, a suggestion that has now been implemented in the current structure under the RBI.