Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has come out in support of the Union Government’s target of 30 billion digital transactions in FY 18-19. The association of small traders and businesses in India is strongly advocating the need to educate merchants and consumers about the use of Bharat QR for making payments for business transactions and personal usage. CAIT sees digital payments as the future of business, and has launched a nationwide awareness and educational campaign to popularise Bharat QR. It also wants the trading community to empower themselves by embracing this payment solution.
The campaign kicked off on May 10 and will continue till October 2 across the country. During the campaign, CAIT will train 1,000 traders as Master Trainers to take the campaign further down the line. It will hold around 300 seminars, workshops and conferences in different cities, imparting education on Bharat QR.
On the sidelines of a press conference, CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal emphasised that Bharat QR will play a pivotal role in encouraging over 60 million micro and small merchants to accept digital payments. He stated that Bharat QR is the world’s first asset light, interoperable payment solution which offers seamless, safe and secure transactions to both merchants and consumers.
More recently, the GST Council has taken the decision to offer incentives for usage of digital payments in GST transactions. Given the governments keenness to push digital transaction and GST Council’s recent decision, Khandelwal feels it is in the best interest of the trading community to equip themselves with available digital payment systems. “Bharat QR is the best alternate among all digital payment solutions,” he said.
“Usage of POS terminals costs bank rentals and other expenses for traders whereas Bharat QR is simply a unified code made available through a bank, having no rentals or other charges. It is important that the government pushes for one common national QR code standard as per the Bharat QR specifications,” said Khandelwal. He remarked that the acceptance of Bharat QR by the community of 60 million micro and small merchants will be an important enabler to meet the government’s target of 30 billion digital transactions. “We urge the government to provide the policy support and incentives to accelerate acceptance of Bharat QR.”
CAIT has made the following recommendations to government to expedite acceptance of Bharat QR by micro and small merchants:
- One QR code for India – Bharat QR and all closed loop QRs should be migrated to Bharat QR specifications
- Drive deployment and transaction targets specifically for Bharat QR to banks
- Remove additional factor of authentication for Bharat QR transactions
- All new current and savings accounts of merchants to be given Bharat QR by default in welcome kit by banks
- Existing current or savings accounts of merchants be given Bharat QR over next two years
- Incentivise consumers and provide GST rebates to merchants for activation of Bharat QR
