Business Observability: The Key to RBI-Compliant Digital Payment Security

India is witnessing an exponential surge in digital payments—from UPI and mobile banking to AEPS and wallets. In response, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is raising the bar for compliance and digital payment security.

A few years back, the RBI issued guidelines for controlling and complying with digital payment security to regulated entities such as Banks, NBFCs, and other Payment Service Operators (PSOs). In accordance with this, they also launched the SEWA portal (Service Availability Web Page) to provide customers with real-time information on the availability of digital banking services.  

As digital payments continue to rise in India, the RBI has revised penalties for non-compliance with the guidelines and controls mandated. This has put more pressure on the regulated entities like Banks, NBFCs, and Payment Service Operators (PSOs) to build robust, scalable, and compliant systems.

Additionally, the RBI mandates now extend indirectly to non-bank PSOs, making it essential for regulated entities to oversee and ensure compliance across their partner ecosystems as well.

These measures reflect the RBI’s commitment to ensuring the security and integrity of India’s digital payment systems.

Understanding the RBI Master Direction

The RBI’s Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls outlines clear mandates for:

• • Strengthening IT and payment infrastructure
  • Enforcing governance, risk, and compliance protocols
  • Detecting fraud and monitoring anomalies
  • Stricter authorisation and authentication controls
  • Protecting data with stringent data policies
  • Real-time incident reporting and response
  • Ensuring audit trails and long-term log retention
  • Creating and protecting customer awareness

The Reality: Gaps in Compliance

To comply with the RBI Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls, banks and NBFCs are implementing a series of measures aimed at strengthening security, improving operational efficiency, and ensuring consumer protection. Despite these efforts, many entities are facing:

• • Failures and delays in reporting
  • Inadequate monitoring and risk profiling of transactions.
  • Lack of real-time reconciliation
  • Poor visibility into third-party (non-PSO) performance
  • Failure to conduct timely information systems audits.​
  • Manual and delayed audit report generation
  • Incomplete incident root cause analysis
  • Improper storage and retention of logs

These gaps and failures have resulted in increasing monetary penalties from the RBI.

To overcome these challenges, Banks require Business Observability,  which does more than just monitoring infrastructure or applications. Business Observability gives you visibility into every step of a digital transaction, from user to backend, and enables real-time responses, audit readiness, and complete transparency.

vuSmartMaps™, VuNet’s Business Observability Platform  

Built for compliance and resilience, vuSmartMaps™ is VuNet’s Business Observability Platform, designed from the ground up to provide real-time, scalable, and intelligent visibility into digital payments. It combines big data, AI/ML-based correlation, and deep domain context to provide a unified view of:

• • User experience
  • Transaction journeys
  • Infrastructure and application health
  • Business performance

In view of the RBI’s mandate for digital payments security control, vuSmartMaps™ can help Banks and NBFCs to align with the compliance mandates by automating processes, improving visibility at a transaction level, real-time reporting, and extending to their non-PSOs as well.

Let us look at how vuSmartMaps™ achieves all this.

Here is a snapshot of some of the capabilities delivered by the platform.

Fig 1: Sample of vuSmartMaps™ Capabilities matched to RBI Compliance Requirement

Conclusion

Business Journey Observability is no longer a nice-to-have. With the RBI mandating transparency, auditability, and customer-centric security in digital payments, vuSmartMaps™ helps you:

• • Avoid penalties
  • Strengthen operational efficiency
  • Deliver resilient, smooth experiences
  • Stay one step ahead of compliance

Want to see vuSmartMaps™ in action? Request a tailored walkthrough aligned to your RBI compliance needs today.