Banks to ask FM to offer incentives in digital payments

Demonetisation of higher denomination of notes has resulted in a massive chaos across the countries. To make things better, the government has made point-of-sales mandatory in rural areas as well. Debit card payments have shoot up and wallet companies have got a significant boost.

Taking a cue from this success, head of large commercial banks and payments banks are likely to approach finance minister Arun Jaitley to promote digital banking by introducing tax incentives in the budget for 2017-18.

The finance minister is already scheduled to meet bankers this week to discuss a few pre-budget topics. It has been reported by The Economic Times, the State Bank of India chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya will lead the delegation, which will also include representation from payments banks, small banks and even finance companies.

While this is a regular thing every year, this time it will deal with lot of things including digital payment incentives. This will make people use this mode of payment to get used to it.

"We had meetings directly with the finance ministry and the minister has also been looking at ways to deal with the things obstructing further up-take of digital payments. We are hoping that the government will go beyond the small hindrances and look more at the structural issues preventing the pickup in digital payments," a senior executive, who has held several meetings with the government on promoting digital payments told the ET.

The government is considering measures for the upcoming budget session of Parliament as well, he said.