Now, customers who are willing to open a new account will not have to be present physically at a bank branch. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now allowed opening an account over a video chat with a representative of a bank branch.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to give nod to video-based Customer Identification Process (V-CIP) as a consent-based alternate method of establishing the customer’s identity, for customer on boarding.
The central bank said that this decision has been taken in a bid to boost the digital channels. This step is a landmark step for digital banking as such a facility is available only in few countries namely Germany as the market leader.
The demand for such a facility primarily came through tech-savvy new-age banks and prepaid payment instrument issuers, in sync to which the centre amended the Prevention of Money Laundering Rules which the banking regulator has now operationalised by updating its master direction on ‘know-your-customer’ (KYC) norms. For video-based customer authentication, PAN number and Aadhaar number will be compulsory.
“Live location of the customer [Geotagging] shall be captured to ensure that customer is physically present in India,” RBI said. Banks have to provide the facility of such audiovisual interaction.
RBI also said that all the regulated entities (RE) like lenders should ensure that the entire process is a seamless, real-time, secured, end-to-end encrypted audio-visual conversation with the customer and the quality of the communication is sufficient to allow recognition of the customer beyond doubt.
“RE shall carry out the liveliness check in order to guard against spoofing and such other fraudulent manipulations,” the RBI said.
