Odisha seeks free card payments beyond December 31

Batting for people living in rural and remote areas, the Odisha government today said all card payments need to be made free-of-cost even beyond December 31.
The state government gave the suggestion at a meeting of the committee of Chief Ministers on digital payment system headed by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
Besides Naidu, the Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, special invitees and senior officers of other states attended the meeting.
"All card payments should be made free of cost even beyond December 31, 2016," Odisha Chief Secretary A P Padhi said in the meeting adding, Service Tax on digital transactions upto Rs 10,000 should be exempted.

Yesterday, the Centre had announced such a measure for transactions upto Rs 2,000.
Seeking all government payment gateways be made bank neutral, Padhi said POS machines should be supplied by banks free of cost to government departments, local bodies and other agencies.

He, however, said all efforts should be made to ensure that the interest of the citizen, particularly those in the rural areas with deficient banking infrastructure was protected.
Padhi raised the issue of deficient banking infrastructure in the state and said 70 per cent of the Gram Panchayats with 47 per cent of rural population do not have a bank branch.

"Banking Correspondents are also not active due to a host of reasons. One-third of the Gram Panchayats even do not have a Banking Correspondents. Therefore, it is extremely important at this point to have a massive programme for opening brick and mortar branches in Odisha and other similarly placed states," he said.
Stating that mobile vans and temporary counters should be pressed into service by banks in rural areas to provide access to banking and other digital payment services, Padhi said Banking Correspondents with Micro ATMs, particularly enabled with Aadhaar-based Payment System, should be activated.
Pointing out that telecom connectivity in Odisha was still very inadequate, he said one-third of villages were not covered under mobile connectivity.

Only less than 2,000 out of 6,238 Gram Panchayats have wireline broadband service, he said.
"Under the ongoing Bharat Net Project, so far only about 350 GPs have been enabled with high speed Internet facility. Since digital payment infrastructure at present is extremely weak, specially in semi-urban and rural areas, there is an urgent need for the Centre to ensure that Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited accelerates the project to connect the remaining GPs as early as possible," he said.
Padhi further emphasised on availability of data connectivity with sufficient bandwidth when there was only limited voice connectivity at present.
On behalf of Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary to the Chief Minister, the Development Commissioner-Cum-Additional Chief Secretary and the Principal Secretary, Finance participated in the Video-Conference.