Govt urges banks to incentivise digital payments, transactions

As part of the Digital India campaign and to promote cashless transactions across the country, Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday urged banks to  incentivise digital payments.

"I urge banks to incentivise digital payments and transactions to bring more people into the digital fold," said Prasad at a meeting with representatives from the Reserve Bank of India, the State Bank of India, the National Payments Corporation of India, the Financial Services department and the CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) here.

"The ministry is taking initiatives to offer better technology products and user friendliness to inform, educate and enable citizens on digital transactions," he said.

Exhorting state-run and private sector banks to become change agents of Digital India, the minister said uniform branding would help create awareness in the public on availability of digital transactions with merchants.

"Digital payments need to be made convenient and flawless. Banks should adopt villages and promote digital inclusion through greater awareness in hamlets where majority tribal population live," he said.

He also urged the banks to identify large mandis to encourage adoption of digital transactions in line with the government's priority to promote digital payment transactions.

The meeting also deliberated various issues relating to technology and security of UPI, USSD, RuPay and Aadhar Enabled Payment Systems.

The NPCI will soon launch a redesigned USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) platform and a common app to enable digital transactions and address inter-operability issues.

Electronics and IT Secretary Aruna Sundarajan who was also present said that banks should work towards making USSD a preferable and convenient mode of digital payments, especially for Jan-Dhan account holders.