Modi government likely to ban cheque books to boost digital transactions

Hyderabad: Apart from a proposal to link properties with Aadhaar to curb black money, a senior official of a trader body said the government may phase out bank cheques to push digital transactions in the “near future”.

“In all probability, the Centre may withdraw the cheque book facility to encourage digital transactions,” said Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) secretary general Praveen Khandelwal recently.

According to RBI data, the number of digital transactions rose around 10 per cent to 965 million in October from 877 million in September. The digital transaction in October is the highest since the demonetisation in November 2016.

Mr Khandelwal, however, feels that a large volume of business payments happen either through cash or by cheque.

While the personal payments have shifted to NEFT and IMPS modes, businesses, where payments involve multi-level clearances, have been slow in discarding cheque-based payments.

Mr Khandelwal said the Centre spends Rs 25,000 crore on printing notes and another Rs 6,000 crore on logistics and the proliferation of digital payment would help the government save this money.