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• Service charge on e-tickets booked through IRCTC will be withdrawn.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.