Govt working with banks to ramp up PoS machines: Goyal

The Dollar Business Bureau 

Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday that the government is working with foreign companies and banks to increase the volume of point-of-sale (PoS) machines for cashless transactions.

“We are certainly working with the banks and also with the international companies to see how we can ramp up PoS machines,” Goyal said while speaking at the ‘Digital Economy Forum 2016’ in New Delhi.

The Minister further said that he personally feels that 6 months down the line PoS machines would slowly become irrelevant and may be 2 years down the line a new PoS machine would even not be needed.

“Today, smartphones have become the PoS machines,” he added.

In reply to a question, Goyal said, “It was Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that decided on demonetisation. It was the one who worked on demonetisation and I am sure that the final decision on demonetisation would have been taken by Prime Minister Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.”

Goyal further said “The government would definitely take measures to make sure that more cash is pushed into the system rapidly in the rural economy. Some bankers on Tuesday said that digital transactions growth is to the tune of 300% in the past 2-3 weeks.”