Bringing relief to the e-wallet companies, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended the deadline for compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) norms by six months for prepaid payment instrument (PPI) issuers. The deadline was earlier set as 28 February.

In a statement the RBI said, "Based on requests received from various stakeholders to increase the above timeline on account of difficulties in undertaking Aadhaar e-KYC and time necessary to put in place alternative systems for completing the KYC process, it has been decided to allow PPI issuers additional time of six months for completion of the KYC process."

These PPIs allow using the value stored on these instruments to facilitate the purchase of goods and services that include financial services as well. The deadline was looming on many e-wallets that have competitive products on their platform that allow customers things from movie tickets to mutual funds. The advanced features and purchases on these, however, require completion of KYC procedure as per RBI rules.