'More user-friendly versions of digital payments in pipeline'

A group of top secretaries formed by the Centre post demonetisation has advised the government to undertake such initiatives

A group of top secretaries formed by the Centre post demonetisation has advised the government to roll out more user-friendly modes of digital payment and is in touch with all district collectors and chief secretaries to take stock of the situation.

"The group is regularly interacting with district collectors and the government machinery at the local level to review the situation especially in rural areas," a source said.

There is a need for a new user-friendly version of USSD -- Unstructured Supplementary Service Data or mobile short codes that can be used for banking via low-end feature phones and similarly for Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a national cashless payment platform, the source said.

The feedback received from rural areas has been passed on to the authority concerned and more user friendly-versions of digital payments are in the pipeline, it said.

The Aadhaar-enabled payment system seems to be more effective in villages and efforts are also on to make it more easy for general public, it said.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, Financial Services Secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal, DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek and Rural Development Secretary Amarjeet Sinha are the members of the group. Director General of Unique Identification Authority of India Ajay Pandey is also part of the panel.

Meanwhile, the government has announced various measures for promoting digital payments including deployment of 2 POS devices each in 1 lakh villages with population of less than 10,000 among others.