In bid to boost the digital economy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget 2017-18 reduced limits of cash transactions and announced 100 per cent penalty on breaches while proposing incentives to promote the non-cash transactions. He further said that that digital payments would bring benefits for the common man and financial inclusion and JAM (Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile number) trinity were precursors to this current push. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO, Paytm said: "It is a digital economy budget. Every person from a small shops to consumers are pushed towards the digital economy. Tax benefits, incentives to use digital payments and extending loans based on a digital footprint will create a larger merchant ecosystem for digital payments."

Source: India Today February 02, 2017 05:13 UTC