July 01, 2014 – India’s Cheque Truncation System open as usual

            As Reserve Bank of India’s accounting year is July to June, every July 1, Reserve Bank of India remains closed for public transactions.

            Under CTS the settlements take place in the respective banks account maintained with Reserve Bank of India, in its eKuber CBS.

            Till last year, the CTS Grids were closed in tandem with RBI closure on July 1. However, this year, Reserve Bank of India has decided that it will remain open even for public transactions on July 1, 2014.

            This means RTGS system will also work which in turn facilitates CTS Grids to be open.

            More than 400 lac cheques are being routed monthly in the 3 CTS Grids across India i.e 15 lacs cheques per working day.

eKuber revolutionizing Indias’ Banking Sector

          eKuber is the name of the Core Banking Solution running Reserve Bank of India unified accounting systems.

          eKuber integrates RBIs  operations across all its departments and offices. The RBI has 22 regional offices, most of them in state capitals.

          Competitive and non-competitive bids for Government securities also have to be submitted in electronic format on the RBI's Core Banking Solution (E-Kuber) system.

          In view of the benefits of direct membership in NPCIs Cheque Truncation System (CTS), cooperative banks are also opening accounts in the nearest RBI branch. With an account in the eKuber CBS, the cooperative banks can provide the benefits of CTS to their customers.

Fraud – Forging the signature / Stamp of Chartered Accountants by borrower

                Way back in July 2010, Indian Banks Association (IBA) had submitted a request to ‘The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India’, seeking a foolproof procedure for verification of attestations on financial statements submitted by borrowers, at the level of bank branches, which is simple and easy to administer.

                This is still pending and hopefully in the NaMo era, this will be taken up by ‘The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India’, to its logical conclusion.

                ICAI has introduced an optional feature to ensure the authenticity of various statements and docu­ments being certified / attested by Chartered Accountants.

This optional feature is known as Unique Document Identification Number. The details of the scheme can be read here.

                UDIN is a maximum 32 character Unique Document Identifcation Number which will be issued to every document certified/attested by a Chartered Accountant and regis­tered with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

ICICI Bank has made an important change to its rewards programs

ICICI Bank customers have been informed that  with effect from June 12, 2014, a Redemption Handling Fee plus Service Tax will be charged on every redemption request for PAYBACK Points earned on ICICI Bank Credit Cards, Debit Cards or MySavingsRewards.

The rewards can be redeemed in two ways:-

01) Catalogue based

02)Online and in-store

The charges details are as under:

01) Catalogue based redemptions: A Redemption Handling Fee of  99 + Service Tax* will be levied on each redemption.

02)Online and in-store redemptions: A Redemption Handling Fee of  25 + Service Tax* will be levied on each redemption. 

The Redemption Handling Fee plus Service Tax will be charged to the Credit Card and will reflect in the monthly statement. For Debit Card and MySavingsRewards points’ redemption, the fee will be debited to the customer’s bank account.

16th Indian LokSabha Elections – ePayments to the fore

            One of the major spinoffs of the 16^th LokSabha elections has been the surge in ePayments.

            One variant of the ‘Direct Subsidy Transfer Scheme’ is the 'direct cash transfer scheme' to buy voter loyalty.

            More can be read here.

            The key benefit for the political parties is that the money-trial will be useful to minimize leakages in the chain. Minimization of leakages was the main aim for ‘direct cash transfer’, of government payments/subsides too.

            Another advantage is that the same account details can be used for future elections too.

            As the amounts transferred to individual accounts will be of low-value, automatic tracking of such transfers to ascertain the underlying reasons will be difficult.

            Once the voting results are announced on May 16, 2014, the political parties will have lots of data to analysis on the pros and cons of ‘direct cash transfer’.