MeitY trains 44 lakh citizens and 130,000 merchants for cashless transaction

The MeitY (ministry of IT & electronics) has taken various steps in awareness creation and have already trained and enrolled 44 Lakh citizens and 130,000 merchants for digital payments. 

MeitY organised Electronic Payments & Receipts (EPR) workshop aimed at bringing all the stakeholders in government payments and receipts ecosystem on a common level of awareness about various solutions. MeitY introduced initiatives at national level being undertaken for immediate adoption of electronic modes payments and receipts.

“EPR workshop is an initiative to augment the DigiDhan Abhiyan initiated by government of India. Such workshops will help us in understanding the overall ecosystem and collaborating and addressing the challenges related to the government payments & receipts from perspective of last mile payers & payees,” said Aruna Sundararajan, secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).  

“It is the Government’s declared mandate to go from high-cash system to less-cash and then towards cash-less system. There is a drive under Digital India to make interaction with government paperless, faceless and cashless. All government departments need to be familiar with the frameworks, rules and changing technologies with respect to EPR framework whether it is government to government (G2G) or government to consumer (G2C) transactions, we have to move into the digital paradigm. As far as G2C is concerned, by April 1, 2017 all entitlements shall be given through Aadhaar enabled Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) channel,” added Sundararajan. 

She further emphasized on the need to ensure secured and seamless transactions in all financial transactions and designate a Cyber Information Security Officer in all such government departments that carry financial transactions with government, business and citizens.

“The workshop was very interactive, with active participation from 26 states and several major departments of the government,” said Dr Radha Chauhan, National E-Governance Division (NEGD). 

Sofia Dahiya, Joint CGA, said, “We plan to cover all implementing agencies that receive government of India funds to track and monitor fund flow. Non-Tax Receipts Portal (NTRP) launched by CGA is a complete solution for receiving funds by the government. It is bank neutral and once universally adopted will make consumer payments easy.” 

Ganesh Kumar, chief general manager, RBI highlighted the need to factor direct and indirect costs involved in cash transactions, both on the part of receiver and payee while deliberating on the transaction charges for online payments. 

The workshop was attended by officials from central and state government departments, banks, NPCI, payment card companies, pre-paid instrument providers, payment service providers, aggregators, technology service providers and regulators. 

The workshop deliberated on challenges in government payments and receipts from the perspective of last mile payers and payees as residents/institutions, government departments’ and PSP’s perspectives.