Today, banks issue various prepaid instruments like prepaid cards, digital wallets, gift cards, fastags, etc. that are mandated to comply with certain regulations, as prescribed by the regulator in its master directions. At the same time, regulated entities carry out remittances, issue forex, international debit and international credit cards governed by tax laws. Any issuer providing multiple types of instruments, or partnering with multiple technology service providers is expected to follow these regulations and laws. The prepaid instrument regulations are meant to monitor/manage the level of prepaid instrument loading and usage at an individual customer level. The tax laws focus on collecting tax at source (TCS). These compliances demand a centralised repository that takes care of the following:
Uniquely identifying the customer and rolling up based on personally identifiable information (PII) sought from the customer at the time of onboarding.
Classifying customers based on their risk-profile categorisation.
Maintaining personalised limits at the customer level.
Controlling loading and usage at the issuer level.
Intimating the Bank / Regulated Entity on TCS applicability and rates.
This is precisely what the Centralised System of Records or C-SOR offers. A centralised System of Records (C-SOR) is a centrally managed repository that maintains customer-level records for a range of instruments issued by technology service providers (TSP) on behalf of the issuer. All customer actions undertaken by the TSP are sent to C-SOR for verification and validation. This means that only C-SOR-validated customer actions are treated as valid. Given below are a few scenarios that illustrate how the Centralised System of Records could be used by issuers in the context of various businesses they undertake.
Prepaid Cards: Bank and Non-bank PPI issuers issue prepaid cards through multiple TSPs. To maintain the balances and daily/monthly/yearly transactions allowed across transaction types and KYC types, be it full KYC or small PPI, the issuing entity should be employing a centralised system of records. For instance, a customer who was onboarded via both TSP1 and TSP2 will be identified as a single customer in the C-SOR system and the usage data should be managed accordingly.
Payments Bank: Payments Bank Savings Account balances plus balances contained in PPI or other internal wallets should not cross 2 Lakh INR at EOD. The differential should be swept into its partner Scheduled Commercial Bank’s deposit account. CSOR makes sure that the aggregate balance across applicable instruments doesn’t cross the prescribed limit.
LRS Limit Maintenance: Limits under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (250,000 USD in a fiscal year) can be maintained by the C-SOR based on usage across instruments like Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Remittance Accounts and Forex Cards. The issuer can also be notified about usage that affects the TCS charged at a customer level.
CARD91 has built a robust centralised system of records as an API-led solution which lets issuers monitor its registered customers on a real-time basis. For more information, please reach out to sales@card91.io.
Written by Praveen Varghese, Product Manager, CARD91.
