Govt asks banks to install one million points of sale

In order to promote digital transactions across the country, government has asked banks to install one million additional points of sale (PoSes) within four months.

To this end, banks have already placed orders for 600,000 PoS machines and another 400,000 are likely to be ordered in the next few days, the finance ministry said.

There are about 1.5 million PoS terminals currently across merchants to facilitate card-based payments.

"As part of the plan to expand digital payments ecosystem and facilitate move towards cashless transactions, the government has decided that an additional one million new PoS terminals be installed by March 31," the ministry  said.

To encourage purchase of PoS machines, the excise duty on acquisition of PoS machine, which was 16.5 per cent, has been waived till March 31.

The ministry said a drive has been undertaken with Ministry of labour and employment and states' administration to open banks accounts for unorganised labour by holding camps.

A total of 273,919 camps have been organised so far in which 2,454,000 accounts have been opened.

In the wake of government's decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from November 9, banks are making all-out efforts to facilitate genuine transactions.

"Appropriate action is being taken against individuals involved in irregular and unauthorised activities. Since 3rd December 2016, action against 7 officials of Public Sector Banks (PSBs) have been taken," it said.

Besides, audit has been taken-up in few branches of PSBs, it said, adding that the concurrent audit is also being initiated as per the requirement and under the extant guidelines of RBI.