In its efforts to incentivise digital payments in the country, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has launched a Digital Rath under its national campaign “Cashless Bano India” in association with MasterCard to boost digital payments among traders and consumers across the country and to motivate trading fraternity transform from cash-based business formats to technology-led digitalised transactions.
The Digital Rath was flagged off today at Kashmiri Gate Market in walled city area of Delhi. The Digital Rath is targeted to touch about 10 lakh persons across the country in ten cities including Gwalior, Jhansi, Kanpur, Kolkata, Puducherry, Nagpur, Bhopal,Pune, Navi Mumbai and Mumbai.
The campaign will continue till January 30 and Digital Rath will cover about a distance of 10,000 kms in this phase. Beside these cities, the campaign will be conducted simultaneously in other pats of the country as well. The campaign is designed to also include customers/ buyers in the horizon by way of providing them incentives for every transaction done by MasterCard credit/ debit card and chance for seller/ trader to win a reward.
B. C. Bhartia, National President, CAIT and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT said that small merchants are backbone of Indian economy and efforts towards a less-cash society will help bring more transparency, trust and technology which will mainstream the self-organized sector and help them reap the rewards of a Digital Economy.
The Cashless Bano India campaign will prove to be a game changer in adoption of digital payments in the country. At a time when we are moving ahead towards Digital India, the adoption of digital payments is the nucleaus of this change.
During this last one year of demonetization, CAIT remained on the forefront of digital payment revolution in the country with the enduring spirit of creating mass awareness through its nationwide conferences, seminars and campaigns.
Today, with the launch of its third ‘Digital Rath’ CAIT is a step ahead and bring incentives to traders for adoption of digital payments so that digital payments system rapidly gains massive traction in the entire country.”
Rohan Mishra, Vice President, Mastercard said, “This association with CAIT will provide a major fillip in our endeavour towards a less cash society and we believe that small traders and merchants are an important constituency to help India transform from a cash economy to one of the most advanced digital economies in the world. Mastercard has set a goal globally to connect 400 lakh micro and small merchants to its electronic payments network by 2020 and this partnership with CAIT is a step forward towards reaching that goal.”
The country has moved several notches higher in terms of scale and adaptability of digital payments system in the last one year of demonetization. As per Reserve Bank of India (RBI), 933 crore digital transactions collectively valued at Rs 12.13 lakh crore have taken place in the country, between November 2016 and September 2017. CAIT believes that digital payments system would create positive climate in the country for doing business with ease which would certainly result in more opportunity to grow.