 "UPI")
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Friday proposed measures, including creating a unique Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to ensure that investors make transactions only with registered intermediaries through UPI and are safeguarded from fraudulent players.
The market regulator issued the draft circular in this regard following consultation with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and two committees of Sebi, amid rising instances of online financial frauds.
The market regulator proposed creating a unique UPI address for collection of money by investors.
Under the proposals, the UPI IDs of the securities market will include the handle name “@payright” combined with the bank name to ensure easy identification by investors. A green thumb up icon in a triangle will also be used to show the legitimacy.
“The implementation of the proposed mechanism is unlikely to entail any major costs. The entire process involves four nodes i.e. Sebi, NPCI, banks and registered intermediaries,” said Sebi in the consultation paper floated on Friday.
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The market regulator has also proposed an upper limit of up to Rs 5 lakh per day for capital market transactions done through UPI, which may be reviewed from time to time with NPCI.
The older handles of the intermediaries will be discontinued over time.
“The ongoing mutual funds SIPs will continue to remain in force so as to avoid any disruption. However, new SIPs and renewal or extension of existing SIPs must be done using the new UPI IDs only,” noted Sebi.
For allocating new handles to the banks, NPCI will make changes in their system following which banks will be required to allocate UPI IDs to Sebi-registered intermediaries. Only self-certified syndicate banks will be allocated the “@payright” handle by NPCI. Further, the allocation will be done only after verification from Sebi Intermediary (SI) Portal.
Sebi has sought public comments by February 21.
