What were the major developments in payment and settlement systems in India during the last decade?
During the last decade, payment system services offered by banks to the common persons as well as the corporate bodies have improved substantially. It is partly due to increased use of technology in service delivery and partly due to procedural changes necessitated in the wake of competition amongst the banks. Changes visible are the following : Firstly, cheque clearing system has vastly improved. Time taken for collecting a local cheque has now reduced to two or three days. It used to take 4 or 5 days earlier. At 42 large cities automated cheque processing centres have been set up where cheques received by all bank branches in the city are processed at night. Time taken for collection of outstation cheques has also been reduced. Now it takes 4 to 10 days depending on location of the paying centres. It used to take 10 days to one month earlier. Secondly, during the 90s, a few variants of electronic payment products were introduced. Electronic Clearing Service(ECS) helped large corporat
