Committee of Chief Ministers on adoption of Digital Payments meets in New Delhi

The meeting followed the deliberations held by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, VC, NITI Aayog, CEO, NITI Aayog, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and DG, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with the Governor and senior management of RBI and CMDs of major private and public sector banks on Thursday in Mumbai.

Maharashtra government informed that it was introducing an Aadhaar Bill in the legislative assembly to give legal status to the use of Aadhaar number for various purposes. It also informed that it had launched a major campaign to promote digital transactions.

Madhya Pradesh government reported that it had initiated a major program to digitize the transactions in government mandies.

Odisha Government pointed out that the state was deficient in financial infrastructure, including bank branches, bank correspondent, Internet penetration and mobile phones.

The Committee took cognizance of the slew of measures taken by Ministry of Finance to incentivize use of digital payments and noted that further steps are required to make digital transactions attractive vis-à-vis cash transactions.

While noting that RBI and banks are largely supportive of the measures, the Committee of Chief Minsters on adoption of digital payments endorsed several decision such as UIDAI would shortly roll out the common Android based Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) application, RBI should allow authentication through iris scanner and One Time Password (OTP) for AEPS, etc

In a follow-up meeting of the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and VC, NITI Aayog with the major telecom companies, the need to address issues relating to sufficient bandwidth for financial transactions, last-mile connectivity, affordability and security of digital transactions was discussed and several action points were identified.

The Committee of Chief Ministers has been set up by NITI Aayog to examine and promote the adoption of digital payment systems across the country.

Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu is the Convener of the Committee with Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Puducherry and Sikkim along with the Vice Chairman and CEO NITI Aayog with five experts including the former Chairman of UIDAI, Nandan Nilekeni are its members.

Image: AndhraPradeshCM Twitter