The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed NRIs to pay bills on behalf of their families in India through Bharat Bill Pay System (BBPS).
- Instead of transmitting money to Indian accounts and using it to pay such bills, NRIs will soon be able to directly pay such bills on BBPS.
- The rationale behind the RBI move is to make it easier for the NRIs who do not have access to a full suite of bill collectors, or may not have an NRE account, should be able to make utility payments on behalf of their family.
- The move will also benefit payment of bills of any biller onboarded on the BBPS platform in an interoperable manner. The RBI will come out with the necessary guidelines on this shortly.
About Bharat Bill Pay System (BBPS)
- BBPS is a one-stop financial framework for payment of bills that is interoperable and accessible at any point in time and from anywhere.
- BBPS, owned and operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), offers an interoperable platform for standardised bill payment experience, with over 20,000 billers onboarded on the system.
- BBPS offers a myriad of bill collection categories, such as electricity, telecom, DTH, gas, water bills, and other repetitive payments like insurance premium, mutual funds, school fees, institution fees, credit cards, fastag recharge, local taxes, housing society payments at one single window.
- The payment mode options facilitated under the ecosystem are cards (credit, debit, and prepaid), NEFT Internet Banking, UPI, wallets, Aadhaar-based payments, and cash
