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The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has asked Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines, to come with suggestions to ease the impact of demonetisation, especially in rural areas.
According to sources, the PMO directed the two Ministers to form a team and coordinate plans to promote cashless transactions in the maximum number of areas possible, at least in urban centres to start with.
Prasad and Goyal have put together a team that includes Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, MeitY; Neeraj Kumar Gupta, Divestment Secretary; Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, Common Service Centre (CSC) e-Governance Services India; and Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, MeitY.
“The meeting was called to promote cashless transactions to diffuse the crisis. Both the Ministers have set up a team which will make a presentation to the PMO on Monday (late evening),” a government official told BusinessLine .
The task is to show how government agencies can be utilised for cashless transactions — such as mobile wallets, unified payments interface (UPI) and CSCs as banking services.
“There are around 2 lakh CSCs across the country, so they can also be used as payment system operators (PSOs) and their staff as banking correspondents for transactions,” the official said without giving more details.
According to a senior official at MeitY, a framework has already been issued, advising all Central and State departments, along with other government bodies, to ensure that all payments are cashless.
“We had already conducted a pilot programme on this,” the official said.
Paytm makes gainsMeanwhile, with people being compelled to go cashless, digital payments company Paytm has been witnessing over seven million transactions worth ₹120 crore a day, helping it cross the $5-billion gross merchandise value (GMV) mark four months ahead of its target. Last year, its GMV was $3 billion.
Other digital payment firms such as Oxigen Wallet and MobiKwik are also cashing in on the Centre’s move. Oxigen, which has over 25 million users, recently said its prepaid visa card volumes have increased four times.
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