Telangana State suffers payment pangs

Hyderabad: The Union government's ambitious programme to promote digital payments has hit a roadblock. The severe shortage of chips being used in debit cards and credit cards has led to a situation where the banks are not able to issue new cards to the customers. The problem is more acute in smaller towns and rural areas.

Generally, the scheduled banks issue cards in a week or 10 days and the private banks disburse them in three to four days from the date of the application submitted by the customers. Now, it takes at least 3 to 4 weeks in the districts, a senior most bank official of a noted PSU (Public Sector) bank headquartered in Hyderabad told The Hans India. Applications for new debit and credit cards and the renewal of the cards are getting piled up in the bank offices for the past two months. Banks are being flooded with queries from customers on delay in issuing these cards. He said it would be better for the consumers to opt for UPI (Unified Payment Interface platforms like GPay, PayTM, etc ) mode for money transactions and to buy goods till the issue is resolved.

Sources said that the shortage of debit and credit cards was due to global semiconductor shortage which resulted in steep fall in chip production. In the wake of increasing cyber frauds and the threat of cloning of the cards, banks adopted the chip technology. China is one of the major suppliers of these chips. Now China has stopped the supply of these cards. The corona pandemic has led to the increased use of debit cards many folds in Telangana. At present, the banks are not able to disburse more than 10,000 cards per month and the number is likely to further go down.

Officials said that this would affect the beneficiaries of the government schemes like Aasara pensions for the old aged, widows and physically handicapped as they depend on debit cards for withdrawals every month. Now, they will have to wait before the banks for money withdrawals.

The banking industry feels that this situation would continue till middle of 2022. Global semiconductor shortage can be addressed only when the Union government promotes the chip manufacturing units domestically, the officials said.