The Watal committee appointed in August 2016 to suggest measures to recommend appropriate measures for encouraging digital payments submitted its final report on December 9, 2016. Digital payments to be made within the Government is one among a number of recommendations. While the central government has already kicked off taking decisions to mandate digital payments, the state governments and municipal corporations have already set the ball rolling by accepting payments in digital forms.
The huge push from the Government for accelerating the adoption of digital mediums has certainly helped in a big way. For example, according to statistics available at eTaal, the Government web portal for dissemination of e-Transactions statistics of National and State level e–Governance Projects, the transactions for availing government service electronically have increased by 33 per cent to cross 1,000 crore in 2016. The portal takes into account all e-transactions related to public services delivered from the Government to the citizens across sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, telecommunication etc.
Ever since the government has announced the demonetization initiative, there has been a big push among municipal corporations to go the cashless way. Lucknow Municipal Corporation, for example, recently announced that it will deploy swipe machines across all cash counters to encourage people to pay house, water and sewer tax through debit and credit cards.
Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation, (KDMC), the twin cities based in the outskirts of Mumbai, provides about 103 Government to Citizen (G2C) Services, out of which payments for 15 services have been made online enabled, informed E Ravendiran, Municipal Commissioner, KDMC. All payments made by KDMC either to external stakeholders or to employees should be mandatorily made through digital mediums. The corporation is attempting to bring the rural and migrant population in the mainstream by making them convince to pay through online mediums.
Rahul Jagtap, IT Head, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), said, “Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) collects 30 percent of taxes online. The Citizen Service Centres (CSCs) are being upgraded to accept online payments. The PMC has partnered with NASSCOM for digital literacy. 100 Digital literacy centres known as ‘Light house’ are already operating,” PMC is planning to offer citizen services to facilitate home delivery of various authentication related or other government certificates after processing the request online. Currently, the citizens have to physically visit the Municipal offices to get the aforesaid certificates / documents.
“The banks and card payment providers have their own set of challenges, which should be resolved in order to have a speedy less cash society,” Jagtap said about the challenge faced on the way to becoming a less cash country.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has digitally enabled many government services like property registration, tax etc; getting a birth / death certificate. “The salaries of the Municipal employees is also paid online. Post the demonetization on 8th November, the AMC has encouraged banks, NBFCs to lend to Self Help Groups (SHGs) by using the RTGS medium. The transaction charges levied on PoS is a major deterrent,” said Yogesh Maitrak, Director, Urban Community Development Department (UCD), Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
Goa is the first state to be notified to go completely cashless. “The commercial taxes and other divisions should be encouraged to go cashless first because they are heavily reliant on cash. The plan is being put in place to have a Unified Card Payment System, which will make Panaji, India’s first city to have a centralised card payment mechanism,” said Swayandipta Pal Chaudhari, Smart City CEO, Panaji.
It is also important for the financial systems of states to talk to each other. The public bodies also need to come up with out of the box thinking to overcome challenges. In Nagpur, the citizens are using cashless options but the number is still meagre. Ramnath Sonawane, Nagpur Smart City CEO opined on the wariness and apprehensions to go digital but was optimistic about, cashless payment options becoming mainstream, gradually.
“The service providers should think ahead of the curve to beat the fraudsters. They should also gain the trust of the citizens by keeping the systems simple, safe and sustainable,” said Sonawane.
The NPCI and RBI wants agility in the system, to adjust to different requirements that come from time to time from other regulators, central government and other agencies. “VMware has seen a spurt in the kind of changes requested in the technology platforms after the demonetisation order. The security robustness has been given paramount importance by all the relevant agencies. Digital literacy is a crucial step in achieving the benefits of demonetisation,” said Sandeep Sehgal, Director – Government & Defense, VMware India.
