RBI Releases ‘Payments Vision 2028’, Shaping India’s Future Payment Landscape

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released its ‘Payment Vision 2028’ for a three-year period, from December 2025 to December 2028. Since 2021, the RBI has been issuing the Payment Vision document every three years, with each vision providing direction to the development of the payment landscape. The latest vision document for 2028 has been shaped with the theme ‘Shaping India’s Payment Frontier’. 

India has already made its mark in real-time digital payment processing, processing around 50 per cent of all global real-time transactions.

Now, the focus is not just to expand the reach, but to deepen trust, improve resilience, and expand global footprints, while keeping safety, inclusion, and user empowerment at the core.

The latest Vision Document identifies critical initiatives, such as safety, convenience, international efficiency, user empowerment, digital safety, and fraud prevention. Amid rising digital frauds, it also aims to explore creating a shared responsibility framework; both the issuer and the beneficiary’s bank jointly bear liability for unauthorised digital transactions.

Specific Initiatives For Payments Vision 2028

Here are the 15 initiatives outlined in the document for the future of India's payment ecosystem:

1. Transactional Control For Remitters: Under this, customers will be allowed to enable or disable digital transactions across all digital payment modes through issuer channels. This ‘Switch on/off’ feature is currently available only on cards.

2. Comprehensive Cross-Border Reporting: RBI will publish reports on cross-border payments to analyse domestic trends, technological advancements, transaction costs, and speed, among others.

3. Efficiency Review Of Cross-Border Ecosystems: This aims to identify any regulatory and operational issues in the cross-border payments. This is aimed at helping micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) exporters.

4. Streamlined Authorisation Process: This aims at improving the ease of doing business. A single-window application process for entities will be considered where they require authorisation under the Payment and Settlement Systems (PSS) Act, 2007, and the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999.

5. Shared Responsibility Framework: This is to explore limiting customer liability and, where the issuing bank and beneficiary bank will jointly share the accountability for unauthorised digital transactions.

6. Small Payment System Providers (SPSPs): Under this, RBI will examine setting up a permanent regulatory sandbox to recognise a new class of SPSPs that can operate without requiring RBI authorisation. The aim is to shift to a tailored regulatory oversight mechanism based on the risk profile and nature of activities handled by these entities.

7. Research And Training Capacity: This is to boost domestic and international collaboration to enhance research in areas, such as risk management, fraud prevention, and cybersecurity.

8. TReDS Interoperability And Innovation: This aims at supporting MSMEs by providing full interoperability across TReDS platforms and offering export-specific discounting.

9. Cyber Key Risk Indicators Framework: This aims to continuously monitor PSOs' security mechanisms, and provide early warning signs related to IT risks.

10. Modernisation Of Cheque Systems: RBI will explore introducing electronic cheques to combine the benefits of paper instruments with digital speed.

11. Enhanced Payments Data Access: Under this, AI-based channels are envisioned to serve as a single point of access for all payments data, including cross-border data, to add transparency and data-driven innovation.

12. Reimagining The Card Ecosystem: This will focus on building an open and interoperable card ecosystem to empower merchants and cardholders with more choices, transparent pricing, and secure tokenisation.

13. Payments Switching Service (PaSS): This will allow customers to migrate all payment instructions easily when they switch their bank accounts, especially during bank mergers.

14. Expanded Regulatory Ambit: Under this initiative, entities that are playing a critical role in facilitating digital transactions, including the e-commerce marketplace and assisted payment providers in the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), will be brought under direct regulation.

15. Uniform Domestic Legal Entity Identifier (DLEI): This aims at identifying parties in financial transactions, especially in non-individual transactions. This is to better manage risks in the financial transactions.

All these 15 initiatives will be adopted during the course of three years until December 2028. While technology is fast advancing, and an AI-based channel will be used to monitor the transactions, there is no explicit mention of crypto assets.