Cashless drive gathers pace in Siddipet
At a camp being organised in the town, the Siddipet Municipal administration and personnel of certain banks are trying their best to influence shopkeepers and individual account holders to switch to cashless mode of transactions.
Siddipet: At a camp being organised in the town, the Siddipet Municipal administration and personnel of certain banks are trying their best to influence shopkeepers and individual account holders to switch to cashless mode of transactions.
Towards this end, bankers and the municipality staffers are interacting directly with shopkeepers and other customers. They are helping in opening current accounts for shopkeepers and are taking applications for swipe machines, which would be provided to them by banks in a couple of weeks.
As a proactive measure to address the cash crunch being faced by customers these days, the municipality has undertaken the herculean task of not only motivating the general public to use debit cards in shops and other businesses, but also providing debit cards to those who did not have them all these days. The opening of accounts is also gaining pace in the constituency.
Kadavergu Rajanarsu, chairperson of Siddipet Municipality, while personally supervising the awareness and registration camp on Thursday, said that thousands of accounts had been opened in the past couple of weeks in the municipality and that all of the account holders were being given debit cards.
A counter was opened by the municipal staff for granting trade licences and collecting licence fee for shops using swipe machines at the venue.
According to Balraju, Officer on Special Duty, SBI, SBH, ICICI, AXIS, HDFC, GVB and DCCB banks were actively participating in the efforts to supply swipe machines for free to the shopkeepers in the municipality. In all, 310 machines have already been installed in shops. In the past couple of days, 129 machines had been given to shopkeepers, he said.
There are three types of swipe machines. One is PSTN, which works with a landline number and carries zero rent. The other one is a desktop GPRS machine with an in-built SIM, for which shops and establishments would be charged Rs 250 per month.
The third one is a portable wireless GPRS machine, for which Rs 450 per month is the rent. There is no limit to the number of transactions that could be made in a shop using the swipe machines.
According to Venu Madhav, Assistant Manager, SBI, customers can use their debit cards to swipe and also use it as a micro ATM. The customer would be charged a nominal sum of Rs 5 per transaction by the shopkeeper for availing that service.
The maximum limit per card per day is Rs 2,000, according to him.As of now, the banks are not charging shopkeepers any rent in the absence of any instructions. The municipal administration says rent for the swipe machines would be borne by the district administration for the next three months.
“We have 50 people who have been deputed by SBI in and around Siddipet who have formed teams and have been going house to house ensuring people have debit cards and have accounts in a bank. We are also empowering them to go in for cashless transactions as much as they can,” said Venu Madhav.
The Siddipet municipality has been on a door-to-door campaign for the past couple of weeks as part of efforts to make Siddipet constituency the first cashless transaction constituency in the entire country.
“It is impossible to go completely cashless even in developed countries. But the efforts have to be appreciated,” opined Venu Madhav, speaking to The Hans India at the camp, which would continue for the next few days.
