RBI to transform India into a cashless economy soon!

In order to enhance the use of technology to move towards a 'less-cash' society, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has today announced that it will come out with a concept paper on promoting electronic payments, especially in smaller towns, by the November end.

"In order to promote electronic payments and use of cards for transactions, the Reserve Bank will put in the public domain a concept paper for proliferation of card acceptance infrastructure in the country, especially in the tier III to tier VI centres, by end-November 2015," as per its Fourth Bi-monthly Monetary Policy statement.

Besides this, the apex bank also stated that it has issued Rs 100, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination banknotes with a new numbering pattern with ascending order of the size of the numbers from left to right. Gradually, this will be introduced for all denominations of the banknotes, it added.

In its Fourth Bi-monthly Monetary Policy, RBI considered the need of visually impaired people as well. It initiated the process for introducing additional identification marks on Rs 100, Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that will help visually challenged to easily identify the currency.

The central bank has also stated that exchange traded currency futures and options will be rolled out in three cross-currency pairs -- EUR-USD, GBP-USD and USD-JPY. This is being done with a view to enable execution of cross-currency strategies by market participants.
(Image: The Economic Times)