Visakhapatnam to be a near cashless society within a year

The city of Visakhapatnam might soon be a near cashless place. With a goal of covering the majority of the 2 million people in the city, the state government has launched a campaign to promote cashless transactions.

For a cashless Visakhapatnam

The IT minister for the state of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Nara Lokesh, said that there’s a need to reduce dependence on the cash-based transactions. He informed that in order to help the same, the infrastructure supporting cashless transactions is being launched at various places in the city.

A project that enables citizens to pay through “tap and pay” on the state-run buses, has already started, said T R Ramachandran, India country manager for Visa. The company, which is anchoring the project,  has tied up with a number of lenders to make sure that such cards are issued to the citizens of Visakhapatnam. Ramachandran also added that 90% of the city’s population, or near to 18 lakh people will be set as the project’s goal of the first year.

Mr. Lokesh said that apart from the tap and pay, the project relies on the Bharat QR code through which the users will be able to pay electricity bills and others by scanning the codes on their smartphones. In fact, the bills of other utilities such as gas, telephone, etc can also be paid through this system.

The IT minister said amendments will be moved to the Shops and Establishments Act in the state to make it necessary for the merchants to put up the codes at their shops to accept digital payments.

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