Small vendors switch to swiping machines

Vizianagaram: A woman from a remote village, who came to the wholesale market to purchase vegetables, pays the amount through card, later she went to Rythu Bazar with the vegetables and sells them there and receives the cash from the customers through swiping machines.

This is a tremendous change that has happened in this backward district. Even the rural public is adapting to the fast changing methods of payments after the demonitisation. They are ensuring that there is no break in their daily transactions. Now even farmers, vegetable vendors are slowly getting habituated to using swiping machines and to accept credit and debit cards from buyers.

Rythu Bazars in Vizianagaram have also adopted the cash less transaction mode to meet the cash crunch. At present even 10 days after the arrival of payments day, the ATM centers in this district wear no cash signs and the public is struggling to meet their family expenditure without cash.

The public can purchase clothes, provisions in super markets like More, Reliance and medicines in Appollo, Mediplus medical stores by using bank cards. But it’s not possible to purchase small items like fruits, vegetables and others at way side vendors and push cart sellers. Now slowly even the women vendors at Rythu Bazars are becoming tech–savvy and learning to use swiping machines and accepting cards from the customers.

L Appala Suramma a vendor at Rythu Bazar here is now using the swiping machine and accepting the all bank cards from the buyers. She sells tomatoes, brinjals, carrot, beetroot and other vegetables. She bought them from the wholesale market and sells here as per the price fixed by the government.

Now she is even paying the bills at wholesale market through online methods. Gowriswarim, P Appayamma and others also use the machines instead of cash transactions. They said this is a good way to overcome the cash crunch but sometimes they need to struggle to pay others by cash.

S Umamaheswara Rao, estate officer of Rythu Bazar told “We are encouraging the farmers, vendors and customers to adopt the new method and complete their purchases without the struggle for cash as this is easy and hassle free. We need not bother about small change or small denomination notes.

Simply they can pay the bills through cards. Even rice and onion whole sale traders have switched to the cashless transaction mode. Customers can use any of the digital gateways such as Paytm, Airtel cash and other apps also to make payment for their transactions”, he said.

By Koppara Gandhi