The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said two entities viz  Natural Support Consultancy Services Pvt Ltd, Jaipur and Nucleus Software Exports Ltd, New Delhi, started testing of their products under its ‘Regulatory Sandbox - First cohort on Retail Payments - Test Phase’ from November 16. Regulatory Sandbox usually refers to live testing of new products or services in a controlled and test-regulatory environment for which regulators may (or may not) permit certain regulatory relaxations for the limited purpose of the testing.

Natural Support Consultancy Services’ product ‘eRupaya’ is a set of Near-Field Communication (NFC) based Prepaid card and NFC-enabled Point of Sale device to facilitate offline Person-to-Merchant transactions and offline digital payments in remote locations, according to RBI. The offline digital cash product, ‘PaySe’, of Nucleus Software Exports will help connect with rural areas for e-payments.

The product proposes to help in the digitization of payments in rural areas, starting with Self Help Groups (SHG), through an offline payment solution and a digitized SHG-centred ecosystem, it added. The RBI said it received applications from 32 entities of which six have been selected for the ‘Test Phase’.

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