IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has instructed National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to smoothen the refund mechanism for BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) application.
“This follows feedback highlighting that the process of getting a refund in BHIM application is more cumbersome compared to other applications,” a senior IT ministry official said.
The issue was raised during the second review meeting on digital payments chaired by Mr. Prasad.
“In the meeting, it was pointed out that now 56 crore bank accounts have been linked to Aadhaar, of the total 97 crore back accounts,” the official said, adding that the lag was due to some issues in states such as Assam and Meghalaya.
According to government data, as on December 2017, Assam and Meghalaya have the lowest Aadhaar penetration at 6% and 9%, respectively.
This means that about 41% of the bank accounts are still to be linked to Aadhaar.
Further, the banks have been instructed to invest in and strengthen their IT infrastructure to deal with the rising number of digital payments and improve transaction success rates. Additionally, every bank has been instructed to have at least 30 Aadhaar biometric machines at every branch, and that 50 lakh such devices be installed in the current year.
“We have also identified 15 government departments who have maximum interface with consumers. They will be instructed that all payments and receipts need to made cashless…All departments whose PSUs have a township will be instructed these be made completely digital,” the official said.
The Ministry for IT earlier this year was given the mandate of spearheading the Modi-government's drive to push digital payments. Prior to this, Niti Aayog was responsible for promotion of digital transactions.
