Consumer complaints related to digital transactions rise to 28%: RBI report

Witnessing a rise in numbers of complaints, the digital transactions accounted for about 28% of total complaints during 2017-18.

According to the latest data published by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the ground of complaint, ‘Non-observance of Fair Practice Code’ accounted for the highest share 22.1% of complaints, about 2% less than the previous year.

ATM and debit card related complaints, witnessing about 50% rise, accounted for more than 15% of the total complaints. Whereas credit card related complaints stood at 7.7% and online banking issues at 5.2%.

About 8487 complaints were filed by the internet and mobile banking consumers, said RBI's Annual Report on the Banking Ombudsman Scheme for 2017-18.

RBI had only published a figure of complaints of the segment for the same period. There were no figures available for previous years in the report. Whereas 24,672 complaints filed for issues around the debit card and ATMs and 12,647 complaints on issues around credit card.

Of the total number of Debit Cards complaints, about 60% fell into ‘Account debited but cash not dispensed by ATMs’ sub-category. For credit cards, most of the complaints were related to wrong billing and delayed reporting of credit card status.

In comparison, the digital transactions accounted for about 18.9% of total complaints in the previous year.

In January this year, RBI had launched the ombudsman scheme for digital payments.

The central bank, through the scheme, promised to provide free of cost redressal mechanism to grievances raised by customers for digital transactions.