5 KEY CHALLENGES iN GOING CASHLESS
Smart Governance
Lead Line
Author
Balaji Viswanathan is VP of Products at Invento- changing engineering education in India
DIGITAL economy
in rural
INDIA
5 KEY CHALLENGES iN GOING CASHLESS
Tech literacy- even reasonably educated often get stumped with many of the technologies.
Tech coverage- India’ s cellular internet coverage [ 3G / 4G ] is not that good and so is the smartphone penetration.
Financial inclusion- Many don’ t have easy access to banks, ATMs, Point of Sale terminals etc.
WAYS TO TACKLE THIS
Remove all taxes & duties involved in the import and sale of smartphones & data gear.
Incentivize the aggressive rollout of data coverage and increase the government funds for supporting cellular / satellite data coverage in
Transaction fees- the existing players like Visa and Mastercard charge exorbitant fees especially for smaller transactions.
Enforcing tax rules- In India, most shopkeepers escape from paying taxes as the rules are complicated and taxes are high. Getting them to comply is going to be hard.
remote areas.
A one-time subsidy of Rs. 1000 to a rural poor to buy a smartphone complying with government’ s rules on Aadhaar & digital signatures. They could buy this with their Aadhaar card and the manufacturers could be forced to pre-install UPI app [ instead of their
November 2016 36 www. smartgovernance. in