If you had thought that the demonetization circus was, if not ever, at least settling down a bit, then you were extremely wrong my friends.
Because for the past few days, petrol pumps all over the country have been engaged in an age old game of ‘should I or should I not?’, where apparently they first brought out a protest rule to not accept any debit or credit cards.
Why you may ask the petrol pumps did this? Well this was actually brought about as a way to protest against the recent announcement by the banks wherein they would be levying a 1% transaction fee on all debit and credit cards.
Now, we know that all the back and forth that is going on between the banks and the petrol pumps and the whole panic wave brought by them onto the citizens is mighty confusing.
So we decided to demystify it for you and try to explain the situation for the average Joe or Raj/Prem for the Bollywood loving Indians.
Why Did This Entire Fight (If You Want To Call It That) Start?
So basically this entire thing started from demonatisation.
Because everything that has been happening in our country for the past month or so has been happening due to this one event, that has completely changed the way we live in this country.
See due to the whole demonetization, no cash and long ques at the bank, the Govt. wanted to promote cashless payments and shout about ‘India Going Digital’ and all that shiz.
In order to do that, the govt. brought about a number of incentives, one of which was the removal of the transaction fee and surcharge that customers had to pay at petrol pumps whenever they paid by credit or debit cards.
So Of This Pissed Off The Banks Big Time
This ruling in turn majorly pissed off the banks across country, as they began to lose out a lot of money.
Though the increase of cashless payments occured, the banks on the other hand were not really able to profit from it as that small little ‘transaction fee’ that they applied earlier was done away with for an indefinite amount of time.
There are about 56,200 petrol pumps all over India, so just imagine all the money that banks must have been losing due to no transaction fee.
Thus, Of Course The Next Target Was The Petrol Pumps
Of course, then the next move was targeting the petrol pumps and a couple of days ago, banks announced that they will be levying a transaction fee of 1% on all debit and credit card transactions at petrol pumps.
This angered the petrol pumps who felt this was an unfair ruling and one that could potentially be extremely harmful to the oil industry.
They believe that this decision would take up a big chunk, like more than a quarter, of their revenue.
And since they cannot gain that amount back from the customers yet, petrol pumps would be at a very disadvantageous position.
They retaliated by making their own announcement that they will stop accepting any and all credit and debit card payments starting Monday that is 9th January 2017.
Wait… What Did You Say? No Credit/ Debit Card Payment?
So the latest news is that the banks have decided to postpone any decision making until January 13th after the govt. intervened into the entire matter.
And in lieu of this, even petrol pumps have decided to accept card payment for the time being.
But what will happen on January 13th, when both the parties will be coming together to go over their cases and what will the outcome be?
I do know one thing for sure that slowly, day by day, the govt. incompetence over this whole demonetization is being revealed. However the truth is that, it won’t be the govt. or these banks that get screwed over. Ultimately, it will be us, the common citizens who will have to bear the brunt of all these tiffs.
Image Credits: Google Images
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http://edtimes.in/2017/01/indias-emerging-cashless-villages-was-modis-blueprint-right-all-along/
