Panel suggests simpler ways for cashless payment, Rs 125 cr digital infra push

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 10

The Chief Ministers’ committee on demonetisation and related issues today submitted its interim report to the government, suggesting a more user-friendly version of USSD or *99#, used on feature mobile phones for cashless payments, from December 25.

The panel, led by Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, also indicated that the cost of creating the desired infrastructure for cashless transactions should be borne out of the budgeted amount for financial inclusion. It said the government would need to spend Rs 125 crore for digital infrastructure.

Among several measures to mitigate people’s continued pain on account of cash crunch post-demonetisation, the panel also suggested that the procedure for simplified Know Your Customer (KYC) norms using Aadhaar needed to be adopted.

As the second meeting of the committee was held at NITI Aayog on Friday, the panel in its report said: “Upgraded version of USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) should be rolled out by December 25.”

The Friday meeting followed up the deliberations, which Naidu and NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya had with the Governor and senior management of the RBI and CMDs of major private and public sector banks on Thursday in Mumbai.

The panel said UIDAI would shortly roll out the common Android-based Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) application developed in collaboration with TCS that could be downloaded by merchants.

The panel suggested that the RBI should allow authentication through iris scanner and One Time Password (OTP) for AEPS and there should be no charge on AEPS transactions.

It also listed out a number of incentives to popularise digital transactions for which all consumers and merchants using cashless mode shall be eligible. “The incentives would be at two levels in the form of weekly and quarterly draws for prizes for such transactions,” a statement put out by NITI Aayog said.