Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who leads the Union Government’s committee on transition to a cashless economy, on Thursday said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was spending huge amounts on printing physical currency, transporting and securing it, and replacing the old notes with new ones in spite of greater emphasis sought to be laid on digital payments after demonetisation.
Speaking at the Open Innovation Forum organised here by K.L. University (KLU) and Haas School of Business of the University of California Berkeley, Mr. Naidu said the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) were among the crucial components of the Digital India project aimed at facilitating all payments online on the basis of biometric identity, but the results were not satisfactory as the RBI had not taken any significant step in that direction and there was not much cooperation from the banks either.
“The people at the helm have their apprehensions. We have made the points clear in our (committee’s) first report, but the RBI did not act on it. We will submit the final report soon and, hopefully, it will be taken up seriously,” Mr. Naidu said.
‘Rural areas lagging’
The Chief Minister was responding to the statement by Arvind Gupta, founder of the Digital India Foundation, that the future of payments was going to be card-less driven by biometric identity and the transactions would almost be free of cost, but the rural areas were lagging behind in catching up with the digital revolution.
“Villages are where digital transformation is required, but the banks do not want to serve the non-creamy layer as they believe it does not make a business sense,” Mr. Gupta observed.
Mr. Naidu said a day would come when there would be no need for ₹2,000 and ₹500 notes.
But it is the accessibility of technologies and the cost factor that the committee is trying to address.
It looks forward to making the best use of India Stack (an Application Programming Interface of the Central Government, businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs) that facilitates migration from paper currency to digital, but has still a long road to cover.