Banks told to adopt villages to promote cashless transactions

In a move aimed at promoting cashless transactions, the government has asked banks to adopt villages in clusters in their effort to promote cashless transactions. Besides, the Centre has also tasked all banks to patronise villages which have converted themselves to cashless. According to sources, the banks have been told to adopt mandis to propagate cashless transactions and pay special attention on Tribal and Dalit villages by giving a good demonstrative impact. 

Banks would also come up with UPI and USSD platforms to bring maximum customers on cashless mode. “The capacity of USSD has been enhanced from 1 million to 10 million to streamline the online transactions. Technocrat Nandan Nilekheni has been rope in simplifying operation of USSD. A simpler application for cashless transaction is likely to be launched on December 25, the birthday of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee,” the source said. 

According to sources, the decision in this regard was taken at a high level meeting with representatives of Reserve Bank of India and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The meeting was chaired by Ravi Shankar Prasad and was attended by secretaries of Banking, IT, representatives of all major banks, while officials of RBI and NPCI participated online. 

At the meet, which was called to short out the technical glitches in cashless transactions, all banks were told to establish a robust helpline centres to give access to the people and link mobile number and Aadhar number of customers with their accounts.