Niti Aayog plans easy mobile feature for e-payments

With a view to counter the cash crunch due to banning of high-value currency notes, Niti Aayog announced on Thursday that a more user friendly version of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), used on mobile phones for making cashless payments, will be rolled out in the next 15 days. 

At present, there are about 400 million users of smart phones in the country. The government is optimistic that the move will push digital transaction in a big way , particular. 

The CMs' panel, mandated to examine and promote the use of digital payment systems across the country , is also working out ways to achieve inter-operability of UPI of various banks.

This will enable account holders to use their banks' UPI with subscribers of other banks for making and receiving cashless payments. 

Naidu said, "The issue was discussed in (Thursday) meeting. We are working on inter-operabilty of UPI of different banks."