New Delhi: In order to facilitate move towards cashless transactions, finance ministry has directed banks to install an additional 10 lakh new point of sale (swipe machines) terminals across country by March 31, 2017.
“Towards this end, banks have already placed orders for 6 lakh PoS machines and another 4 lakh PoS machines are likely to be ordered in the next few days,” said finance ministry.
The country has about 15 lakh PoS terminals across different merchants to facilitate debit and credit card based payments. It said that a special drive has also been undertaken jointly with labour ministry and states’ administration to open banks accounts for unorganised labour by holding camps at various locations.
“A total of 2,73,919 camps have been organised so far in which 24.54 lakh accounts have been opened,” said the finance ministry. It said that banks are making all out efforts to facilitate genuine transactions.
“Appropriate action is being taken against individuals involved in irregular and unauthorised activities. In addition, audit has been taken-up in few branches of Public Sector Banks (PSBs). The concurrent audit is also being initiated as per the requirement and under the extant guidelines of RBI,” it said.
