The Telangana government launched T-Wallet, a comprehensive platform for digital payments that does not charge any transaction fee. The wallet is meant for making payments towards both government and private transactions. It is integrated with government departments such as MeeSeva, GHMC, HMWSSB, RTA and the electricity utilities.
The wallet is also intended to be used by the government to directly transfer benefits and entitlements such as pensions, scholarships and MNREGA wages to beneficiaries. The T-Wallet will support payments on smart as well as feature phones and through the 4,200-odd MeeSeva centres.
IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao launched the facility at a function where he released the annual report of the ITE&C Department and presented awards under various categories to IT and ITeS firms, individuals and organisations. Speaking about the latest developments in the T-wallet, he said around 1.2 lakh merchants have been enabled as part of the project and awareness has been created among seven lakh people. Also present in the function were UIDAI Chairman J. Satyanarayana and IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan.
The T-Wallet uses a two-factor authentication mode – Aadhaar and Biometric or Aadhaar and OTP. It is operational in Telugu, Urdu and English. The wallet is available on Google Playstore and can be recharged using credit/debit card, Internet banking or cash payment at the MeeSeva centres. The wallet has been granted escrow facilities through Vijaya Bank for transaction analysts and a RBI licenced PPI operator. The Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) settlement and all merchant related settlements of the digital wallet will be handled by the Vijaya Bank. The Minister said the wallet would take Telangana a notch higher in terms of digital transactions. Comparing T-Wallet with the Centre’s BHIM, he said the latter was largely an app promoting private payments between two individuals. But T-Wallet supports private payments, payments by citizens towards government services and government payments to beneficiaries.
