MoEIT to banks: ‘Enable all accounts with net banking’

“As of date, nearly 35 per cent of the bank accounts do not have the net-banking facility, which is one of the most basic facets of online payments.”

Written by Pranav Mukul

New Delhi | March 1, 2017 01:34 AM IST

3 min read

mobile banking, net banking, government of india, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, niti ayog, narendra modi, digital payments, digital economy

Photo for representational purpose

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which recently took over the responsibility of promoting the digital payments ecosystem in the country from Niti Aayog, has asked the banks to enable all bank accounts with net-banking facility before March 31. “As of date, nearly 35 per cent of the bank accounts do not have the net-banking facility, which is one of the most basic facets of online payments,” a senior government official said, adding that banks would be working on a proposal to finalise the modalities of the plan. Most banks in the country, including both public and private, charge for net banking services such as electronic fund transfer, and some lenders even levy a charge for providing internet banking services to their customers.

On February 15, the Government of India (Allocation of Business) rules were amended through a notification entrusting the IT ministry to promote digital payments. Earlier, the government had set up a panel under the Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to push adoption of online transactions in the backdrop of demonetisation. Following the notification, the official said that the first meeting was held on Tuesday. In the meeting, initiatives such as BHIM app and RuPay cards were also discussed.

“From December 31 till date 17.29 million people have installed the BHIM app. Transactions on the app have topped Rs 958 crore, of which Rs 595 crore were in February alone,” the official said. Apart from BHIM, it was also discussed that a campaign to promote the RuPay debit cards be also undertaken. “(IT Minister) Ravi Shankar Prasad would take a meeting with top executives of private and public sector banks in a fortnight to reassess the progress,” the official added.

The government had also earlier announced a plan to promote digital transactions to reduce its cash to GDP ratio to around eight per cent, which is at present around 13 per cent. Despite a slew of incentives announced by the Centre to promote digital payments, the digital transaction volumes witnessed a 10 per cent fall during the second month after announcement of demonetisation. As per data released by the Reserve Bank of India, digital payments fell 10.2 per cent in volume terms and 7 per cent in value terms during January 2017 compared with December 2016.

Total digital transactions fell to 922.9 million in January from 1,027.70 million in December. In value terms, it declined to Rs 98 lakh crore in January from Rs 105.40 lakh crore in December. This data includes digital wallets and mobile banking transactions, electronic fund transfers, and those on credit and debit cards, among other methods such as Unified Payments Interface and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data.

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