38 villages of Andhra Pradesh to go cashless from next year

cashlessAs many as 38 villages of Andhra Pradesh’s Srikakulam district are on the road to become 100 per cent cashless.

The district administration is creating a platform wherein every transaction will be done using digital platform from next year onwards.

After the arrangements are made, bank swipe cards will be used for every transaction in these 38 villages. The district has 38 mandals and one village has been picked up from each mandal under the project.

“We have opened nearly 30,000 new bank accounts after selecting these 38 villages for the pilot project in the last few days. There will be another 6,000 to 7,000 bank accounts to be opened. We are currently on the job of brining awareness among the people about the cashless transactions and how to operate it,” said P Lakshmi Narasimham, Srikakulam Collector.

The district has nearly 30 banks. Each bank will adopt a village and appoint a dedicated banking correspondent to the adopted village. Since State Bank of India and Andhra Bank have more branches in the district, they will adopt more villages compared to private banks.

Most of the villages selected have high literacy rate and bank accounts. Other criterias include the major percentage of the bank linkage of the Aadhar cards, internet facilities among other parameters which are must for a hassle free cashless transaction.

Srikakulam is the first among all the 13 districts in Andhra Pradesh, which has come up with such novel project on the lines of some villages in Gujarat.