In its efforts to promote cashless economy, the central government is all set to introduce a toll-free phone number 14442 for grievance redressal of customers related to e-payments.
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is association with National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI) is working on a mechanism to enable a common number 14442, where customers of all digital payments platform, including mobile wallets, Unified Payments Interface and BHIM, will be able to register their grievances,” according to official sources.
“The Department of Telecom has allocated 14442 to NPCI for setting up its grievance redressal mechanism for customers of all digital payments. The guidelines are in the process,” an official source said.
Initiatives like demonetisation and Digital India campaign has pushed digital transaction on various platforms by up to 8,800 per cent.
Digital payments on Unified Payment Interface (UPI) platform have increased from Rs 3,721 till November 8, 2016 to Rs 3.31 lakh as on May 17, 2017.
In addition to this, transaction on mobile wallets have grown by 104 per cent, Aadhaar enabled payments system registered a growth by 390 per cent and Rupay debit card transactions rose by 270 per cent during the same period.
Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) launched on December 30, 2016 has been downloaded by more than 2 crore people and total transaction value on it has crossed Rs 1,406 crore.
“The draft grievances redressal rules will be placed before public for their views before guidelines are firmed up,” the source said.
The government has been running a toll-free number 14444 with IT industry body Nasscom but it is limited to creating awareness about the digital payments and does not address grievances.
