Get ready for national clearing module in cheque truncation:RBI

Mumbai, May 10 (UNI) RBI has told banks to get ready to implement the infrastructure for a national clearing module in cheque truncation before the deadline of December this year.

''RBI will begin implementation of the module in a phased manner soon. As many as 52 banks have selected their vendors while others have not. We will get started before the cut off date and benefits will flow only to those people who have got their infrastructure ready'', said Mr Kaza Sudhakar,Chief General Manager,RBI, who was the chairman of a session ''Payment systems and Multi Channel Strategies'at Banknet India's second annual CTO summit here today.

Mr Sudhakar who received his transfer orders last week, has been relieved of his present post today itself. Mr Sudhakar later told reporters that he attended the seminar because he had committed to it more than two months ago.

He said the national clearing module is ready with the RBI in which there will be three concurrent sessions for cheque truncation --high value,local clearing and intercity clearing as well as ability to close any session at any point of time.

The announcement of a national clearing module was made in the monetary policy with the deadline being December 2006.

Anil Kapur of Western Union Financial services while speaking on the theme said Remittance market was a huge business worldwide and second largest capital inflow into the developing countries. He said 21 million Indians lived and worked abroad with the Remittance market being about 21 billion USD.

Speaking about the dynamics of Remittance market, he said people valued low charges,convenience,speed,security and reliability and legal means of transfer. In 2005,Western Union was involved in Rs 275 million worth transfers globally.

Mr Aditya Menon,Chief Information Officer of Yes Bank spoke of diverse new micro payment channels like e-wallet,m-payments and need for security in payment convergence.

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