State Bank of India, the country’s largest commercial bank, has urged the Reserve Bank of India to further increase the per month limit on mobile wallets spend.
Given the quantum jump in digital wallets usage in recent days, the RBI should enhance the user limits further to make it easier for both users and merchants to shift more of their cash transactions to digital wallets, said a note prepared by the SBI’s economic research department.
This suggestion comes on the heels of the RBI revising the per month limits on mobile wallet spend to Rs 20,000 for users and to Rs 50,000 for merchant bank transfers.
To promote digital payment acceptance among small merchants, SBI has decided to completely waive the merchant discount rate (MDR) charges on debit card transactions for all small merchants having annual turnover of up to Rs 20 lakh, for a period of one year, that is, up to December 31, 2017.
SBI SURVEY
Meanwhile, a survey conducted --from December 30, 2016 to January 3, 2017-- by SBI’s economic research department has revealed that 15 per cent of cash based transactions have moved to electronic payments in recent weeks. As much as Rs 25,000 crore of cash based transactions has moved to digital in the last two months, the Survey findings showed.