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Government May Give Two Per Cent Relief On GST For Digital Payments, Says Report
Card payment terminals are on display during the digital IT and telecommunications fair. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/GettyImages)
In a move aimed at discouraging cash payments, the government may give a 2 per cent incentive over the applicable Goods and Services Tax rate in case of digital payments, where the bill is up to Rs 2,000, Times of India has reported.
The proposal is being discussed between the Finance Ministry, Reserve Bank of India, cabinet secretariat and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and may be introduced in form of a discount or cash-back. The need to boost digital payments, the report say, may have been raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The move comes at a time when the number of debit card transactions on ATMs has slumped to around 660 million a month from over 750 million before demonetisation. The number of ATMs, a report in the Economic Times last week said, is stagnating around 2 lakh and shown hardly any growth in the past six months.
Moreover, digital transactions on point-of-sale terminals have ‘increased stupendously’, latest Ecoflash report released by the State Bank Of India had pointed. The report says demonetisation has pushed the country at least three years ahead in the realm of digital payments in just seven months.
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