Digital transactions are just parallel mechanism: Jaitley

Chairing the Fifth Meeting of the Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry of Finance on the subject of ‘Shift to Digital Transactions’ , Finance Minister Jaitley said that the Government is trying to encourage digitisation as much as possible because an excessive cash economy has its own social and economic costs and consequences. 

He said that less cash can be gradually substituted to the possible extent through digital payments or transactions. Government has given lot of incentives to the people to shift to digital mode of payment and the response is quite positive in this regard. 

In his opening remarks Jaitley said that Government and the RBI have taken various steps to bring down the cost of digital transactions. He specifically mentioned about the MDR charges which have been brought down significantly in case of transactions up to Rs 2,000 made through debit cards, i.e. 0.25 per cent in case of transactions below Rs 1000 and 0.50 per cent in case of transactions between Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000.