Private lender Axis Bank has joined hands with Raipur Smart City to launch a payments platform. This initiative will help 10,000 people by March-end to digitally pay for low-ticket transactions in the city.
The citizen can avail the service via smart cards, mobile app, and a web portal, for payments. It primarily targets overall seven lakh users of the civic body bus transport. Not only bus tickets but this service will also help the users in shopping at merchants, paying for property bills and also e-commerce.
“We will be concentrating on putting up the point of sale terminals across the 20,000 merchant establishments in the city and are targeting to have 10,000 users by end of March,” Rajat Bansal, Commissioner, Raipur Municipal Corporation.
Raipur Smart City has invested around Rs 13 crore for the launch of the platform through the tie-up with Axis Bank. This amount was saved from the budget allocated to the city, he added.
The bank has completed all the necessary capital expenditure upfront namely developing the system, the app and web portal, and also installing acceptance infrastructure in lieu of getting the civic body’s accounts, he said.
“Raipur has a population of nearly 17 lakh and the bank has tied up with various merchants to offer discounts, in order to incentivise usage by the citizens,” said Debarchan Mishra, Executive Vice President, Axis Bank.
At the initial phase, users who don’t have accounts at the Axis Bank will also be able to load up to Rs 7,500 into their cards, which will be raised to Rs 10,000.
Axis Bank currently has11 branches across the city and plans to escalate the number to 100 outlets where the card balance can be refilled, said Mishra.
