Kozhikode: The currency crunch triggered by demonetisation has prompted the district administration to intensify the campaign plans of the Union government for digital payments at taluk and panchayat levels.
A series of measures has been initiated by the Centre to provide incentives to the district administration aimed at giving a boost to cashless digital payment systems. Logistic support would be provided to Information, Education and Communication (IEC) activities and camps would be held for transiting to the digital mode of payment.
Official sources said that the NITI Aayog had brought out several incentives for communication campaign for district authorities to promote the transition to cashless digital payment systems. These include incentives for digital payments for day-to-day financial transactions like buying or selling goods, services and transferring money.
The NITI Aayog will provide logistic support for outreach activities at the district, taluk and panchayat levels in the form of the seed money of Rs.5 lakh per district administration as a part of the communication campaign. The purpose is to enhance the seeding of mobile and Aadhar numbers to the bank account, issue of Rupay cards and PIN wherever necessary, downloading of app, and finally achieving successful transactions, they said.
District Collector N. Prasanth said that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had announced cash incentive of Rs.100 for every merchant taking to digital transaction. “Two resource persons would be provided in each district collectorate to coordinate the Common Service Networks in each district,” he said.
The district administration will also adopt measures to transfer benefits of welfare schemes or payments to workers engaged by contractors via digital mode, officials said.
The top ten best performing districts in the country will be awarded the Digital Payment Champions of India Award. The first 50 grama panchayats which go cashless will be awarded Digital Payment Award of Honour. The five digital payment systems are: Unified Payment Interface; UPI ; USSD (*99#banking) [Unstructured Supplementary Service Data mobile banking service from National Payments Corporation of India]; Adhaar Enabled Systems; wallets and .Rupay/Debit/Credit/Prepaid Cards.
The USSD is a technology unique to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) handsets. It works without Internet and uses voice connectivity. There is no need to install any application on mobile handset to use the service.
