Chennai: The Reserve Bank of India has suggested the idea of giving each bank customer a unique identification number. When a person becomes a bank customer for the first time, he will be given this number. That number will identify him even if he becomes a customer of other bank(s).

This initiative would prevent a defaulter in one bank, from transacting business with other banks.

To bring about this measure, it would be necessary to get the approval of more than one government department, particularly the Ministry of Home Affairs. Therefore, it would be quite some time before this measure is brought in, S Ganesh Kumar, general manager, Reserve Bank of India, said.

Addressing a seminar on "Payment/settlement system and digital signature", organised here by Indian Bank, Kumar said that the advent of technology would be good for the customers, but a challenge for the bankers.

He said that the RBI would like to see a system in which funds get transferred across accounts in real time and a customer does not need to worry about a cheque not being honoured.

Kumar said that the banks should pay/credit the customer's account once he presents a cheque and it would be up to the banking system to collect it from the person who writes the cheque. He observed that only three per cent of all the cheques presented are returned, all the rest are passed. But for this "3 per cent", all cheques go through a time-consuming process for settlement.