RBI enables NRIs to pay bills for families back home in India

In a major development, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday announced to enable the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) process to facilitate families of NRIs to easily accept payments from foreign countries while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das today said BBPS was an interoperable platform for standardized bill payments earlier but it is now proposed to enable the payment system to accept cross-border inward bill payments.

The new system will help NRIs to pay for utility, education and other such requirements on behalf of their families in India. This will especially benefit the senior citizens in particular.

What exactly is BBPS?

BBPS is an interoperable platform for standardized bill payment and has a centralised customer grievance redress mechanism. The BBPS live operations was started by the RBI in October 2017.

According to the RBI, 20,000 billers are currently part of the system, and more than 80 million transactions are processed every month.

The country's central bank earlier today announced to hike the policy repo rate by 0.5 per cent to 5.4 per cent.

Bharat Bill benefits

Bharat Billpay has several payment options for billers. It helps consumers get instant confirmation of payment via short messaging service.