The Finance Minister of India, Arun Jaitley, gave his annual Budget speech for 2017-18 today.
The Government is thinking seriously about pushing the economy into a “digital direction”. Here are some interesting announcements and observations related to digital payments –
- Cash transactions above 3 lakh Rupees will become an offense
- Target of 20 lakh Aadhaar based swipe machines by 2020
- Demonetization will lower borrowing costs and increase access to credit
- 125 lakh people downloaded BHIM app of the Government
- Aadhaar Pay system to be launched soon
- Service charge on e-tickets booked through IRCTC will be withdrawn.
- Duty exempted on various POS machines and iris readers to encourage digital payments.
- Proposal of creation of a six-member Payments Regulatory Board in the RBI.
Also, check out Budget highlights from The Hindu here.
