Govt to propagate all cashless options

In a move aimed at dealing with the situation arising out of the demonetisation move, the government has pulled out all the stops to normalise the situation by promoting different available cashless procedures among masses of every section. 

The Centre has started making efforts at warfooting level to make use of every available mean to transform monetary system of transaction into cashless procedures at the shortest timeline.

According to a senior official, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday conducted a high-level meeting in this direction to find out possible avenues of promoting cashless transactions. 

According to the official, “The Centre would approach and request state governments and district administrations to undertake measures for transformation of the society from monetary transactions to cashless.”

“In the first meeting of this kind, union ministers JP Nadda, Radha Mohan Singh, Narendra Singh Tomar, Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan were present to discuss about all possible means to make cashless transactions user friendly,” the official said, adding that meeting was also attended by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, secretaries of IT, banking, telecom, higher education and Aadhar CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey.”

At the meet, it was decided to propagate avenues available for creating nationwide awareness; existing mechanisms for cashless transactions, including UPI (Unified Payment Interface), state banks and other technical platforms for leveraging transformation from monetary to cashless economy in a very short span, the official added. 

The meeting also considered potential alternatives, including Common Service Centre (CSC), schools, petroleum outlets, health centres, rural development ministry outlets, including cooperative societies for transformation into cashless society.

According to the official, the meeting was of the opinion that schools, petroleum outlets, health centres and cooperative societies must be equipped and trained to undertake cashless transactions at the earliest. “They can pave the way for total transformation of the economy into cashless mode,” he said.