India to push for new disclosures at FATF to tackle money laundering

India will push for bringing in new disclosures for credit card issuers, fintech providers and payment aggregators on cross-border transactions at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to make data exchange between member countries more meaningful and effective.

The proposed disclosures, which will be part of new standards in global anti-money laundering, are likely to be taken up at the FATF meeting in April 2025, which will be hosted by India in Mumbai, officials said.

The Centre and RBI have already begun discussions on identifying disclosures that can be brought about without compromising the ease of doing business.

Some of the disclosures being discussed include going beyond the present reporting of just name and country of origin in case of cross-border transactions, which is being felt inefficient and ineffective.

"The standards will be finalised in April 2025," a government official said. "India is in the favour of more disclosures and is in talks with RBI, credit card issuers and the industry so that transparency does not come at the cost of ease of doing business."

FATF, which had in June adopted the mutual evaluation report on India, has placed the country in the 'regular follow-up' category, the highest rating given by the global watchdog and a distinction shared by only four other G20 countries. It will release its evaluation report on September 19.

FATF is also planning to start the fifth round of evaluation of its member countries from October.

India, a full FATF member since 2010, aims to leverage the evaluation to strengthen its international standing, particularly in the context of global recognition of products like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). "India's UPI and Indian rupee are getting more credibility internationally and will get an impetus if India gets a higher rating," said the official.

An improved rating from FATF has broader economic implications for India."An enhanced rating helps reduce India's borrowing costs as it increases interest in India's bonds and it also gives more credibility to the new payment systems like UPI," the official said.