Vendors adopt cashless transactions

- Many traders take the cashless route to survive; install swiping machines at outlets
- Traders and public slowly reconciling to demonetisation

Vizianagaram: After the demonetisation of high value currency notes, vendors and traders who suffered a lot initially in the first 2-3 days
are now making arrangements to cope with the changes as are the public. They are slowly gravitating towards a cashless economy by
opting for swiping machines and net banking.

At present, the traders don’t have enough small denomination notes to tender exact change to the consumer after a purchase as only Rs
2000 notes are available with the majority of the public. Traders are therefore installing swiping machines at their outlets which helps
them do away with the headache of tendering change to the customer.

“We are using ‘Paytm app’ at our store. Customers are paying their bills through Paytm and business is alright,” said K Venkateswara Rao,
proprietor of Rohan Book Centre in Vizianagaram. “Actually, I don’t have enough money in hand although I do have money in my bank
account. The shop allowed me to pay through mobile so I paid the amount and bought whatever stationary I needed,” said K Sridevi, a
customer of the shop.

Even hotels like Mayura and Paradise in the city are accepting cashless payments. Even wholesale shops are allowing customers to pay
bills with bank card or Paytm. Previously the traders did not allow the customers to pay the bills in huge amount through cards as they
would have to pay the tax on such transactions. But now the situation has completely changed and they too have changed their attitude.

Koppara Gandhi