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Opened an e-wallet account recently and have a problem with it? The ombudsman is there to help. But, how long will it take to get your problem resolved? That’s the question. Despite a separate ombudsman being set up for digital payments, there’s no guarantee as to when such complaints are resolved. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in its monetary policy in its statement on development and regulatory policies that it would harmonise the turnaround time of ombudsman on various payments systems.
Beneficiaries
Lately, digital transactions using mobile wallets such as Paytm, MobiKwik etc and apps such Google Pay, PhonePe etc. using Unified Payments Interface are on the rise. For instance, UPI transactions have grown 40 times from 17 million in August 2017 to 674 million until March 2019. Numerous social media posts show accounts of customers who have raised complaints regarding failed transactions (account debited but not credited to transfer party), cash back not received on offers and so on. This move by RBI is expected to benefit all retail users adapted to e-wallets, UPI and other authorised payment systems.
The RBI noted that, currently, the time taken to resolve the customer complaints varies across different payment mechanisms. It said in a statement, “In order to have prompt and efficient customer service in all the electronic payment systems, it is necessary to harmonise the turnaround time (TAT) of resolution of customer complaints and chargebacks, and to have a compensation framework in place for the benefit of customers.”
So, the Reserve Bank proposes to put in place a framework on TAT for the resolution of customer complaints and compensation framework across all authorised payment systems by the end of June 2019.
In the bi-monthly monetary policy in December 2018, the RBI announced to create a separate ombudsman for digital payments. Earlier this year, to promote the digital payment and strengthen the customer’s confidence, the RBI introduced ombudsman and issued guidelines to make complaints regarding digital payments. With a sharper and well-defined time, you could now hope for a timely resolution to your payment system problems.
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