MEITY signs MoU with CAIT to promote digital payments in retail

In a press conference conducted yesterday, Minister for Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) Ravi Shankar Prasad announced signing an MOU with Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) to promote raising awareness level and increasing adoption of digital payments across all states in the country. In presence of Smt. Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary IT and Dr. Ashwini Sharma, DG, NIELIT an ambitious target of onboarding 1crore retailers across 1000 towns/cities has been set.

Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General, CAIT said, "We started this journey of promoting benefits of digital payments approx 2 years back in association with global payments leader Mastercard. It is our fortune that the Ministry of Electronics & IT has decided to encourage us more to take this initiative ahead and now aim at onboarding merchants to digital payments platforms. We remain committed to Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's vision of a digital inclusive India and Shri Arun Jaitley's vision of securing financial inclusiveness for India's largest self-organised base of retailers in every part of the country."

This comes after CAIT released its Less Cash Roadmap earlier this year and after numerous consultations held with various governmental agencies over a year now. Post November 8, a large number of their recommendations have already been accepted and CAIT will now aim at driving state level intense adoption.