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Mumbai: The Smart Card Forum of India has announced the formation of a focus group to promote the usage of smart card-based electronic payments (eCash) in the country. The basic purpose of the group will be to create awareness on advantages of eCash, speedy implementation of the technology and promotion of eCash transactions. The group will focus on initiatives to overcome bottlenecks related to infrastructure, capital costs and regulatory issues. Piyush Khaitan, co-founder and vice chairman, Venture Infotek, will be the chairman of the group. The other prominent members of the group include Dr K Shanker Shetty (Vijaya Bank), Dr VT Godse (United Western Bank), Mr. Hemant Kaul (UTI Bank), Mr. Lokvir Kapoor (Schlumberger), Mr. M.N Shenoi (ICICI Bank), Mr. Parag Rele (Alpab), Mr. Shameek Bhargava (IDBI Bank), Ms Saraswati (IIT Bombay), Mr. Vijay Parthasarathy (Gemplus) and Mr.Varun Prasad (CMS Computers) According to Khaitan, "the e-payments industry in India has acquired the critical mass required to grow exponentially in India. The infrastructure in terms of telecom and other utilities has improved and even the regulatory environment is favourable and conducive. Institutions like RBI have recognized the need for electronic payments. Since smart card technology is already proven, a thrust is required at an aggregate level by the industry players to make sure that growth happens at a much faster pace. This group will take up initiatives which will help in catalyzing the growth of e-payments." To popularise the concept of eCash, the group will concentrate its effort in bringing down the costs of creating infrastructure, lowering the cost of transactions and lowering of duties and taxes related to smart cards & terminals. The group will work closely with utility companies like electricity, telecom and petroleum to get eCash as an official payment instrument to gain wide acceptance among consumers. In India, total personal consumption expenditure is of the order of about Rs 10,00,000 crore out of which only Rs 12,000 crore is based on electronic transactions. This represents roughly one percent of transactions taking place nationwide. The group plans to work towards increasing this figure significantly over the next few years. Commented Vijay Parthasarathy, president Smart Card Forum of India; "the Indian economy is still predominantly a cash economy with 90 percent of transactions happening in cash. This leads to a large-scale flow of currency in the economy leading to innumerable problems like high cost of currency, high cost of accounting and transportation of cash, law and order problems etc. A strong incidence of electronic payment can help curtail these issues to a large extent. We now have the technology in the form of smart cards to achieve this." This group will work closely with RBI, which has sponsored several initiatives in this direction including the Saraf (1994) and the Shere committee (1996) as well as laying out the SMARS standards (2000) to grow eCash usage in India. The group will launch a website with more information on eCash and proposes to organize a seminar and workshop on the subject shortly.
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