SEBI In Talks With National Payments Commission To Reduce Listing Time

Markets regulator SEBI is in discussion with National Payments Corporation of India and others to develop an alternate payment mechanism, which could enhance the efficiency in payment system and reduce the listing time, Parliament was informed today.

“An efficient payments mechanism has the potential to reduce the time and cost associated with the public issue and reduce the market risk for shareholders by allowing unblocking of capital,” Minister of State for Finance Pon Radhakrishnan said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

The SEBI has already reduced the IPO listing time from seven days in the past to six days after the close of the bidding.

“At present SEBI is undertaking discussions with NPCI and other intermediaries associated with the IPO process to assess the feasibility of developing an alternate payment mechanism, which building upon the ASBA mechanism, could enhance the process efficiency in payments system and may curtail the post issue timeline for listing from existing six days,” the minister added.

Earlier, the regulator had ended the practice of allowing the issuer to block the entire subscription amount in demat accounts by allowing the money to be blocked in the investor's account through the applications supported by blocked amount facility.

This helped to not block the investor's money in a third party account till the IPO process was over.