BENGALURU: Small traders have been counting their losses ever since demonetisation. Realising the need and benefits of shifting to digital payments, small traders too are embracing technology. A majority of businesses have gone the digital way with credit/debit cards and online transactions.
Many merchants have made the switch to payment solutions like Ezetap, PayUmoney and Mswipe that provide card swiping machines that are connected to smartphones, allowing customers to swipe their debit or credits cards. A shopkeeper will need a smartphone with mobile data or WiFi connection for the machine to work.
Mohammad Rasiulla, who runs a small eatery joint in Johnson Market, said, “There seems to be no way out now. We were losing a lot of customers. We were approached by an agent of Mswipe and he explained how simple it is to switch to these platforms. Considering how our business have turned out in the last few weeks, we thought it wise to take it up. All you need is a smartphone and then sign up on the Mswipe app, get an Mswipe chip, PIN and mPOS device.”
Abhijit Bose, co-founder of Ezetap, said, “We have witnessed a huge spike in the number of inquiries. The application requests have increased by 100 per cent. We are tied up with different banks and merchants have come to know about our platform through banks. We also have our agents in place as well. Today, everyone has a smartphone and that makes the process easy.”
Following the November 8 announcement on demonetisation, Paytm, an e-commerce platform, witnessed a rise in the number of transactions. From 3 million transactions per day in September, Paytm touched 7 million transactions a day, worth Rs 120 crore.
On an average, Paytm now does over 5 million transaction per day and has 158 million registered users. Paytm added 5 million new users across the country and registered three-fold surge in traffic after November 8.
Stamping out black money, fake currency a Herculean task: HC
BENGALURU: Likening the menace of black money, fake currency and terrorism to a hydra, the High Court on Tuesday said when one head is chopped off, it would raise another ugly head. Justice Ashok B Hinchigeri made this observation while dismissing a batch of petitions challenging a notification issued by the RBI fixing D24,000 as the weekly withdrawal limit for customers of cooperative societies.
Badagabettu Credit Co-operative Society Ltd, Udupi, and other societies were the petitioners.
“The perusal of impugned notification reveals that the Union government and the RBI have come out with the demonetisation scheme to tackle the menace of fake currency notes, black money and terrorism. These laudable objectives cannot be achieved without imposing certain restrictions,” the judge said.
The petitioners moved the HC saying the withdrawal limit had crippled their autonomous functioning guaranteed by the Constitution and had driven them into a financial crisis. The judge added that the RBI is bound to consider their representation.