The Watal Committee report was released in early December to make recommendations about Digital Payments in India. The report is titled: “Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem” This talk takes you through the highlights and lowlights of the Watal Committee report. Malavika presents some of the Committee’s rationale and thinking as set out in the text of the report and gets into the details of each of the 13 recommendations that the report made. The Report’s recommendations could have far-reaching impacts on Indian financial systems design, particularly for the regulatory architecture and the operation of payment systems in the country – including (1) the set-up of an independent “Payments Regulatory Board” within the RBI, (2) large scale amendments to the main Payments legislation, the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007, and (3) several measures to Government around incentivising digital payments by absorbing costs into the system.
