As part of the ‘Digital India’ programme, this payment solution enables multiple e-government services across a number of municipal corporations in the country, including Nashik Municipal Corporation, the governing body of the city of Nashik in the state of Maharashtra, to be delivered to citizens faster and at a lower operating cost.

Nashik Municipal Corporation ramps up ‘Digital India’ programme; leverages multiple e-government services

The challenge

YES Bank has partnered with various municipal corporations across India, including Nashik Municipal Corporation, in support of the government’s ‘Digital India’ vision. As part of this vision, the ‘Smart Cities’ Mission, has been established as an urban renewal and retrofitting programme by the government of India. The mission is to develop at least 100 cities across the country, making them citizen-friendly and sustainable. One aim is to enable ‘Smart Cities’ to move towards a cashless economy where the delivery of electronic services to citizens can be faster and at a lower cost to the providing municipal corporation.

The solution

Nashik Municipal Corporation fully supports the ‘Digital India’ vision. The partnership with the bank is enabling it to achieve Smart City status as it moves towards the government’s plans for a cashless economy.

By leveraging the ‘Unified Payment and Identification’ mechanism, an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPI) and the Smart City Payment solution, Nashik Municipal Corporation taking on a system that offers seamlessness and simplicity to residents and visitors. As part of the plan, YES Bank has also rolled out its ‘RuPay’ co-branded prepaid card. This allows users within Nashik to make day-to-day payments for groceries, utility bills, local transport, healthcare, education, e-commerce and entertainment either via the integrated mobile app or the physical prepaid card.

An app is also being offered to retailers in the form of a ‘soft’ POS. Merchants can now accept cashless payments from citizens via the National Payments Corporation of India’s BharatQR or Unified Payments Interface (UPI), as well as mobile transactions and one-time passwords (OTP) on smartphones or basic ‘feature’ phones.

The digitisation of payments for government service delivery mitigates common issues such as cash payments, lengthy queues at municipal offices, and the need for multiple ID cards. The solution enables the use of the mobile apps or physical prepaid cards. It also goes some way towards the digitisation of documentation of, and payments for a host of Nashik’s services such as property tax, water tax and birth and death certificate issuance.

Best practice and innovation

Digitisation has meant the elimination of physical file submission and all files are now tracked with backup storage that can be retrieved at the click of a button. Payment for government services uses a pre-defined structure to automate submissions and receipts in real-time.

A strong process has been followed, allowing for effective book-keeping of all transactions. This also includes, but is not limited to, conducting KYC of customers, normally via photocopy of the ID proof, but now replaced by e-KYC.

Key benefits

• All data now stored centrally in electronic form.
• Cheaper and more efficient to manage.
• Easier to create secure backups.
• Gives easy access to data for transactional or regulatory reporting purpose.
• Reduces costs of operating various services.
• Customer communications timelier, far cheaper and faster.
• Reduced cash in the ecosystem.
• Other value-added services now being offered.
• Transition from traditional statements and physical financial instruments to electronic statements and e-wallets/ mobile applications is environmentally sustainable:
  • Removes the need for printing and physical transportation of documentation.
  • Lowers requirements of citizens to travel to municipal corporation offices.