Hyderabad: The city traffic police is in a dilemma over taking point-of-sale card swipe machines on rent from banks, which have said that they would levy Rs 10.50 on each transaction of the violators, whether the penalty be Rs 100 or Rs 1,000. IndusInd Bank and ICICI Bank have agreed to waive the rent for the machines but they have been insisting on a transaction fee.
A senior traffic police official said, “Even now, no cash payment is made to traffic officials on the spot. The e-challans are paid by violators at Mee Seva centres and traffic penalty compounding booths by cash or other payment systems. This made the system corruption free. After demonetisation, violators say they want to swipe their cards on the spot. We are discussing with the banks on renting swipe machines.”
Banks offered to waive the Rs 999 fee to set up the machines and Rs 299 monthly rental for traffic police but asked for Rs 10.50 per transaction on domestic debit and credit cards.
Traffic police is quoting a 2012 August National Payment Corporation of India revised interchange and switching fee for point-of-sale transactions which recommends 0.45 per cent for transactions up to Rs 2,000 and 0.85 per cent for transactions above Rs 2,000.
Traffic police said after the note ban, the monthly traffic fine collection had fallen from Rs 5 crore to Rs 2 crore in the city. In August 2016 the e-challan amount collected was Rs 7.2 crore from 2.5 lakh cases.
