The government is set to empower Reserve Bank of India to regulate and supervise various payment and settlement systems like credit cards and national bodies such as the Clearing Corporation of India. “We intend to bring a bill to regulate payment systems,” finance minister P Chidambaram told the Lok Sabha on Friday.
This would be done through the Payment and Settlements Bill, cleared by the Cabinet on Thursday. The Bill provides for the formation of a national payments company that would take over the retail payment systems.
The existing retail payment systems in operation include card-based paper system, manual paper-based clearing and fund transfer system. The government is also planning to introduce biometric PAN cards to prevent duplication. Chidambaram said a joint working group of the finance ministry has submitted its report after obtaining technical and commercial proposals from leading biometric solution providers which is under consideration.
At present, about 13,10,127 persons are suspected to have duplicate PANs. The verification exercise till August 10, 2007 has been completed for 11,43,919 persons of which 10,18421 have been found to be duplicate and have been deactivated.