Govt announces slew of measures to ease demonetization pain; no service charges for online transactions till Dec 31

New Delhi, Nov 23 (KNN) The government today announced another slew of measures to encourage e-payments in order to ease pain caused by demonetization.

Today, Economics Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das announced that service charges will not be levied on use of debit cards till December 31.

For RUPAY cards all switching charges and other charges have been waived till December 31 and no service charge will be levied on digital financial transactions using smartphones till Dec 31.

The government has also asked the national rural bank NABARD to sanction Rs 21,000 crores to cooperative banks, making new denomination notes available in 1.5 lakh post offices, doubling e-wallets' capacity and paving the way for service charge free electronic transactions on 'feature phones' too, until December 31.

"To ensure that farmers get credit and certain quantum of credit by way of cash (for wage payments, etc.), NABARD and RBI have also been advised to make the required cash available to district central cooperative banks," said economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das today.

Government has asked the banks to ensure chain of activities related to crop loan sanction and flow of funds etc are done in smooth manner.

New vehicles with Radio-Frequency Identification devices will be introduced to enable e-payment of tolls at national highways.

Service charge of Railway online ticketing has been waived off till 31st Dec 2016 and all government organisations, have been advised to use only digital payment methods to make payment to their employees.

Das also stated that 82,000 ATMs have been re-calibrated so far. Further adding, that it is only a matter of few days by when all the ATMs will be re-calibrated.

Das also announced a pilot program is underway in 20 banks that are using a new Unified Payment Interface mobile phone application (app). This app will enable not just making payments but also getting payments, all instantly, in real time. The transaction limit in using this app is Rs 50,000.