Reiterating its commitment to achieve complete digitisation, the Andhra Pradesh government on Wednesday kick-started ‘Project Digital Sankalp’ to make Visakhapatnam a ‘less-cash’ city within one year and gradually make it the first such city in the world.
IT Minister N. Lokesh, who made a brief visit to the city, said they were partnering with Visa, a global leader in payment technology, to execute the project.
“This also forms part of our resolve to transform the city into a fintech hub,” he said.
Asked to comment on the project, J.A. Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary and IT Adviser to the Chief Minister, told The Hindu that they were implementing the pilot project in Visakhapatnam.
Simultaneously, digital payments would be promoted in a big way as part of the project all over the State as per the directive of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
Visa had signed an MoU with the Fintech Valley-Vizag, a special entity formed by the government to bring fintech companies to the city, in February along with Thomson Reuters.
Talks are also on to bring other e-payment players to the city.
Mr. Lokesh later attended a round-table discussion to dispel the myths associated with digital payments and said the Chief Minister, who headed the CMs’ committee on implementation of demonetisation, had recommended to the Centre to waive off transaction fee being levied for payments using swiping machines.
Incentives
He said digitisation would offer a plethora of opportunities to start-ups.
“Incentives should be given to encourage cashless transactions. Our Chief Minister, who mooted banning all notes above ₹100 long ago, is firm in his opinion that cashless transactions will ensure transparency and accountability and help weed out black money,” he said.
In a comprehensive presentation made at the launch of the pilot project, five key benefits of digital payments were discussed.
It highlighted that the gross cost of cash is 2% of the GDP and the shadow economy costs India 3.2% of the GDP in the foregone tax revenues.
Sunali Rohra, senior director in Visa, in-charge of government affairs in India and South Asia, said innovations such as Bharat QR (an integrated payment system) had significantly lowered acceptance infrastructure costs for merchants and enabled customers to get instant SMS alerts. Among others, G. Padmanabhan, senior adviser to Visa, K. Vijayanand, Principal Secretary, IT, Pravin Kumar, District Collector, Mani Palvesan, chief general manager, SBI, M.N. Sudhakar, general manager, Andhra Bank, and Sangram Singh, executive vice-president, Axis Bank, spoke on digital innovations.
