Five companies join hands to ease currency crisis in countryside

New Delhi: One window opened in the wake of demonetisation is slated to be closed on Thursday but some others have pulled up their shutters to fill the gap and take the country forward towards cashless economy. Five agencies, one government and the rest private ,have taken up the job to ease the currency crisis especially in the rural areas where bank branches are not too many.

Banned currency notes can be deposited but old notes which have been scrapped will not be exchanged after midnight. This will affect the people in the countryside much as there is scarcity of notes in the bank branches and Automatic Teller Machines in this part. Note availability in banks cannot be improved overnight and, therefore, an alternative had to be found. These five agencies have come forward to change the situation in the area.

You Read: Rupee trades at 68.84 against dollar; plunders to 39-month low

Paytym is one of the companies which has taken a lead in this regard. The others are Airtel, E-wallet , HDFC bank and public sector State Bank of India. Of the them, Paytym has come out with larger plan for the rural areas. It will fan out in most parts of the country with machines which do not require swapping of debit or credit cards.

The company which is making most of the new government's move has already moved in some areas. Gradually, it will increase its footprint. These machines will prove a boon in the rural areas as telephone lines are not required for them and most of these parts are without phones.

Airtel which has also stepped in too has chalked out an ambitious plan. The mobile company has opened its first payment bank in Rajasthan and has proposed a total of 15 lakh branches in different parts of the country. Former Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram Rajan, had granted licences to 11 companies for opening payment banks. Airtel was one of them.

You may also read: Manmohan Singh calls Demonetisation an ‘organised loot and plunder’

Not to lag behind, the SBI and HDFC banks have launched new Apps for the benefit of the rural people under the Unified payment interface. E-wallet , on the other hand, is all set to take care of payments on delivery.

The other major bank, ICICI, has also decided to make its contribution to attract people to plastic money. It has waived off the charge levied on swapping of cards for payment through debit and credit cards.