MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday introduced draft guidelines for improving the speed of cross-border payments, asking banks to inform their customer of the receipt of cross-border inward transactions immediately on receipt of inward message, among other measures.
The RBI said messages received after close of operating hours of the individual banks shall be informed to the customer immediately at the start of the next business day. It was observed that several banks rely upon end-of-day statements of the nostro account for confirming and reconciling receipts in nostro accounts, resulting in delayed credit. To expedite this process, the RBI asked banks to undertake reconciliation and confirmation of credit in the nostro account either on near real time basis or at periodic intervals. The reconciliation interval should normally not exceed thirty minutes.
“Banks shall endeavour to credit the inward payments received during the foreign exchange market hours within the same business day to the beneficiary’s account, and credit the inward payments received after market hours on the next business day, subject to compliance with the extant FEMA and other regulatory requirements,” the guidelines said .
Banks may, based on their risk assessment and subject to compliance with FEMA norms, put in place a straight through process for crediting inward payments to the account of individual residents. Further, lenders may, within a reasonable time frame, endeavour to provide digital interface to their customers to facilitate foreign exchange transactions, including submission of documents or information, and monitoring of transactions.
The RBI has asked public feedback on the guidelines by November 19 and the directions shall be effective after six months.
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