IT IS RAINING DOLES FOR THOSE GOING CASHLESS

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Banks and payment companies are cashing in on Centre’s demonetisation move by aggressively offering discounts on debit and credit card transactions.

ICICI Bank is giving additional credit limit of 20% on select credit cards, Snapdeal is offering an additional 10% discounts through card payments while American Express is giving a `1,000 credit back on new card approvals. ItzCash, another player in the digital payments space, says it is witnessing more than 30-40% growth in volumes traded since Wednesday. “At ItzCash we have been growing at 60% CAGR last three years and we are absolutely bullish towards a 100% growth projections,” says Naveen Surya, chairman, Payment Council of India and managing director at ItzCash.

Snapdeal told HT that it was offering a 10% instant discount offer on all card payments. “Many orders in the range of `2,000 - `7,000 opted for FreeCharge wallet payments option. Debit cards and net banking saw a huge surge growing at four times and three times respectively. Within debit cards, we have witnessed more than 3 lakhs new cards saved in a day, with majority of the response coming in from tier 1 cities as these areas have the highest COD penetration currently,” a Snapdeal spokesperson said.

According to RBI data, India has a base of 661.8 million debit card and 24.8 million credit card users. If their point-of-sales data is analysed, which includes m-wallets, the cardholders spends `1.32 crore daily.

Vipul Parekh, co-Founder and chief finance officer of Bigbasket, said that the startup firm has witnessed a 25% jump in online transactions in the past 48 hours.

(Additional inputs from Jyotindra Dubey)