[Sri Janani Seenivasan and Krishna Ravishankar are 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) students at National Law University, Jodhpur] The Goods & Services Tax (GST) Compliance Rating is a system introduced by the Indian government under section 149 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 (‘CGST Act’), to assess the compliance behavior of the taxpayers. This system assigns a rating or score to...
Reining in Overreach: Why BPSPs Should Not Be Classified as Payment Systems
[Ritvij Ratn Tiwari is a 5th-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru] In February 2024, the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) moved decisively to curtail the operations of certain fintech companies, particularly Business Payment Service Providers (‘BPSPs’), by labelling their activities as unauthorized “payment systems” under the Payment...
SEBI and Brokers’ Industry Standards Forum: Charting a New Course in the Sector
[Vaishnavi Srinivasan and Philip Oommen are lawyers based in Mumbai, and graduates of the National Institute of Securities Markets] In a pioneering move, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has established the Brokers Industry Standards Forum (BISF). Initially proposed in July 2023, the formation of the Industry Standards Forum by SEBI aims to establish regulatory standards, drawing...
Settling the Jurisdictional Conundrum: Navigating the App Developers v. Google Judgement
[Sanjana Rebecca Samuel is a 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune] On 19 January 2024, the Madras High Court dismissed the suit filed by several app developers against Google. The developers asserted that Google’s policies within the Play Store contravened stipulations and directives outlined in the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (“PSS Act”). Additionally...
Open Questions on RBI’s Enforcement Actions in Indian Fintech
“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” – Gloria Steinem Over the last month and a half, the enforcement actions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with respect to Paytm and in relation to certain payment arrangements through corporate cards have raised substantive questions of law, facts and due process. This...
Navigating the Regulatory Maze: The Imperative for Harmonized Decision-Making in SEBI
[Philip Oommen is a lawyer based in Mumbai, and a graduate of the National Institute of Securities Markets] The regulatory landscape of the Indian securities market currently exhibits a noticeable lack of uniformity, as demonstrated by the divergence in decisions rendered by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”). This divergence in decision-making underscores the inherent...
Regulating the Unregulated: RBI’s Proposed Regulatory Framework for the Fintech Sector
[Daksh Kasliwal and Shubham Sehgal are 3rd year law students at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] Over the past decade, India’s fintech industry has been experiencing a remarkable growth trajectory and has emerged as the third largest fintech economy in the world. WEF, in its study, has placed India alongside the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore as “the most...
The Self-Regulatory Paradigm for FinTechs: A Critical Analysis
[Karthika S. Babu and Snigdha are 3rd year B.A., LL.B. students at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] In an attempt to align the pace of regulatory oversight with the exponential rate at which fintech is revolutionising the financial services environment, the Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) recently released the much debated Draft Framework for Self-Regulatory Organisation(s) in the...
Beyond the Hype: Risks and Regulations in Binary Options Trading
[Shaswat Kashyap is a 3rd-year student at Gujarat National Law University and Snigdha Dash a 3rd-year student at National Law University, Odisha] A post late last year on Money Control highlighted a disquieting trend where certain financial influencers (finfluencers) are endorsing binary-trading platforms that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has blacklisted. Social media profiles with significant...
Navigating Jurisdictional Waters: The Controversy Surrounding NFRA’s Retrospective Oversight
[Anish Gupta is a 3rd year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] In the recent case of Harish Kumar v. National Financial Reporting Authority (NFRA), the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has held that the NFRA has ‘superior authority’ to oversee auditors of listed and large companies on disciplinary matters over the Institute of...
Recent Comments