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The Reserve Bank on Thursday proposed to expand the scope of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) by including pre-sanctioned credit lines at banks within the ambit of the popular payment platform. UPI is a robust payment platform supporting an array of features. Presently it handles 75 per cent of the retail digital payments volume in India. The UPI system has been leveraged to develop products and features aligned to India's payments digitisation goals, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das while announcing the bi-monthly monetary policy. "It is now proposed to expand the scope of UPI by enabling transfer to / from pre-sanctioned credit lines at banks, in addition to deposit accounts," he said. In other words, UPI network will facilitate payments financed by credit from banks. This can reduce the cost of such offerings and help in the development of unique products for Indian markets. At present, UPI transactions are enabled between deposit accounts at banks, sometimes intermediated
More than two-third of the new to credit customers in India hailed from the rural and semi-urban areas in 2021, according to a credit information company. Women, farmers and youth lead the charge on the New To Credit (NTC) customer addition front, which is desirable from a financial inclusion perspective, Transunion Cibil said on Tuesday. In 2021, the total number of NTC customers stood at 35 million while the January-September 2022 period saw 31 million additions, it said in a report. NTC consumers are ones with no prior credit history on their credit bureau file who opened their first-ever, traditional credit product such as a consumer durable loan, personal loan, agricultural loan, two-wheeler, gold loan or home loan. More than a fourth of the NTC customers in the first nine months of 2022 started their credit journey by availing a consumer durable loan, followed by 16 per cent who took an agricultural loan and 13 per cent availed personal loans, it said. Among the NTC consumer
Moody's on Tuesday gave a 'negative outlook' to credit worthiness of countries globally for 2023, saying high prices of food and energy would curb economic growth and raise social tensions. Tighter financial conditions and economic scarring will push some debt burdens to unsustainable levels, while rising borrowing costs will erode debt affordability, according to Moody's. It forecast that as many as 13 nations, including India, would spend over 20 per cent of their government revenue in servicing debt next year. The policy dilemma between servicing creditors and meeting populations' demands for social and economic developments will intensify as governments dedicate a growing share of their revenue to interest payments, it added. "Our outlook for sovereign creditworthiness in 2023 is negative. Although inflation will start declining, prices of food and energy will remain high, curbing economic growth and raising social tensions," Moody's said. Global GDP growth will slow to 1.7 pe