Launch of the Bhutan Immediate Payment Service

The Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) in collaboration with the Department of Information Technology and Telecom under the Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC), the Financial Institutions and the G2C Office launched the Bhutan Immediate Payment Service (BIPS).

BIPS is an important initiative towards promoting the use of digital payments in the country. It was developed with twin objectives to promote the use of digital payments and to provide access to financial service by harnessing the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).

Under this initiative, a customer is empowered with the facility to initiate inter-bank person-to-person fund transfer and payments on an instant, secure and real-time manner with any of the participating banks through delivery channels, such as the Internet, Mobile and ATMs. BIPS, which is hosted at the RMA, provides interoperability of payment across the banks and agencies and facilitates e-payments between Citizens-to-Government, Government-to-Citizens, Business-to-Business, etc.

Currently, the Bank of Bhutan, Bhutan National Bank and Druk PNBL provide the services. The remaining banks are expected to enable the facility. Further, Thimphu Thromde has integrated e-payments to provide end-to-end service to citizens. The other government agencies, especially the G2C services, are expected to provide the end-to-end services to citizens gradually.

BIPS was launched by the Hon’ble Minister of MoIC Lyonpo D.N.Dhungyel and Hon’ble Ambassador of India to Bhutan Shri Jaideep Sarkar on 27th January, 2017. The project was developed with the financial support from the Government of India.