What cashless? Swipe machines shortage hits Mumbai doctors hard

The government wants a digital economy but its favour remains sequestered to ewallets When it comes to supply of card swiping machines to facilitate the call for digital transactions it is a whole different story For focus consider the city doctors who have applied for the swipe machines but are now playing the waiting gameFollowing the November 8 call by the PM to demonetise the economy and instead move to a cashless economy it has not exactly played to planDoctors cry foulNow with the shortage of the card machines mdash that are usually brought in from China mdash not only patients even the doctors find themselves in dire straitsAlso Read Navi Mumbai NMMT takes a swipe at epayments for ticketsMany patients want to pay check up and testing fees via their card but doctors donrsquot yet have the machines due to delay on the suppliersrsquo endDr Prahlaad Prabhu Desai TB specialist applied for a card machine over a month ago but hasnrsquot received it so farDr Prahlaad Prabhu Desai TB specialistldquoThe government wants us to go cashless but if there is no supply of machines then how will we fulfill the demands of patients People want to pay by card but doctors donrsquot have the machines as the banks are delaying itrdquo said DesaiDr Shashi Kapoor an eye specialist who has also been waiting over a month already said ldquoBanks say that due to high demand I have to wait another month for the machine to come but patients donrsquot understand itrdquoRead Story Maharashtras first cashless village is finally liveTo rub salt on the wound there is a new diktat that from April all doctors will have to start using the card machine in their clinics and hospitals to charge patients In such a scenario doctors say they arenrsquot sure if it can succeed at all ldquoIt should not be made compulsory as we are already facing a shortage of machines This will make the situation more chaoticrdquo said Dr DesaiThe fork in distributionMost of the machines from the two companies mdash USowned Verifone and Frenchowned Ingenico mdash are imported from China where they are actually manufactured From there depending on the need of the customer either banks or distributors like PayUMoney and Pine Labs help in distributing the machinesEarlier the dealers used to generally supply the machine within 48 hours but now it can take upwards of one week to 15 days as the demand from such dealers has surged by 600 per cent Darshan an agent of a Mumbaibased company dealing with distribution of the machines said ldquoEarlier we used to get demands of 40005000 machines yearly but now since the demonetisation it has gone up to 10000 in a single month All businesses even the grocery supplier are asking for the card machine So the demand is high but the supply is lowrdquoIn cases of banks it is worse A senior officer from SBI said that the demand of machines from SBI has gone up by 300 times mdash not just in urban but even in rural areas Because of that the supply is less and the wait period has extended from 20 days to two monthsldquoAfter demonetisation all big and small businesses have started using the machines Earlier it was mainly the private hospitals as the bills there were much higher but now small private hospital and medical shops are also approaching usrdquo said the SBI officer