Mumbai, Mar 17 (PTI) With the wider acceptance of cashless payments, banks need to make efforts to bring more merchants in the country into the digital payments ecosystem, especially through Quick Response (QR) code-based method, according to a senior official.

Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), also said that currently there are six crore merchants in the country and just 1-1.5 crore are part of the digital payments universe.

"It is important that all the merchants in the country are brought into the digital payments ecosystem. That will not happen with the Point-of-Sale (PoS) machines. That will happen much more easily with other electronic ways of making payments, especially the QR code," he said.

He was speaking at an event organised by Indian Banks' Association (IBA) on Wednesday.

QR codes are two-dimensional machine-readable barcodes, which are being increasingly used to facilitate mobile payments at PoS.

With the increase in penetration of smartphones in the country, QR code-based payments are the most cost-effective method to expand digital footprint.

Sawhney urged banks to step up their efforts to onboard more number of merchants, either through their own team or by partnering with start-ups and other service providers.

"Banks can really help by making it financially attractive for the merchants to use the QR code-based method of receiving payments as the default," he suggested.

The government has set up a dedicated 'Digidhan Mission' at MeitY for building strategies and approaches in collaboration with all stakeholders to promote digital payments and create awareness.

"We, from the 'Digidhan Mission', are with you (banks) in this journey and we will love to have more thoughts from you as to how from about 1-1.5 crore merchants, who are on board today, we can take it forward to all six crore merchants, who receive payments of different kinds," Sawhney added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)