Electronic transactions for e-governance schemes such as commercial taxes, utility payments, and e-courts touched nearly 1,000 crore in 2016, averaging 2.8 crore payments every day.
Official data reveal that e-transactions for such services touched 975.40 crore in 2016, marking a 44 per cent rise over the 675.14-crore payments in 2015.
The first five days of December have registered 7.31 crore e-transactions on the Web site and government officials expect this to rise further with the focus on digital payments.
“When demonetisation was announced in November, a number of payments had already been made with cash. But this month, there is likely to be more online transactions,” said a source.
On Monday, the Finance Ministry halved the threshold for e-payment to suppliers by nodal Ministries to ₹5,000 from the earlier limit of ₹10,000. “This will help attain the goal of complete digitisation of government payments,” it said.
It has also asked nodal Ministries to encourage their employees to make use of debit cards for personal transactions instead of cash payments.
Payments for agriculture, rural development, commercial tax, land revenue and utility bills, registered the highest number of e-transaction, according to the Web portal etaal.gov.in.
The Web site provides an aggregated record of e-transactions performed through eGovernance applications.
But, contrary to expectations that demonetisation of high value currency may have pushed up such cashless payments, e-transactions in the month of November was not the highest for the year. The month of November registered 93.58 crore e-transactions for government services.
In contrast, a record 117.59 crore of e-transactions for government services such as income tax, passport and immigration, agriculture and road transport took place in June this year, followed by 115.47 crore payments in May and 98.22 crore payments in October.
States such as Gujarat, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, which have registered some of the highest number of e-transactions in the country have also taken steps to promote cashless payments.
“We have opened 2.25 lakh bank accounts, largely for unorganised sector workers to ensure that their salaries can be paid online and industrial sector in the State doesn’t not suffer,” said a Gujarat government official. It is taking similar steps for 18,000 village level milk cooperatives to ensure ease of payments.
Since November 9, Gujarat has registered 3.58 crore digital transactions, followed by Telangana and Andhra Pradesh where 2.06 crore and 2.02 crore such payments have been made.