Arthia Payment System

Kissan Arthia Information & Remittance Online Network

This system marks a landmark change in the way payments are made to Arhtias and finally to the farmers and has opened up a new chapter in the history of the department as to how the use of technology becomes a facilitator for all stake holders. This has been successfully implemented all over Punjab and may be extended to other crops as well and some facility of this type should also be developed to deliver subsidies on kerosene, diesel, fertilizers etc.

The benefits of this system to the procurement agencies and Arthia would be as follows :-

This payment system was redesigned with the help of NPCI, Global e purchase and participating banks and finally KISSAN ARHTIA INFORMATION & REMMITANCE ONLINE NETWORK was implemented in KMS 2012-13 by Pungrain in all its Mandi for the payment to Arhtia on a/c of purchase of paddy with the following participating banks:-

The Following are the figures of the transactions made through this project during KMS 12-13:-

1. Participating Banks issued cards detailed as follows:-

After successful implementation of the project during KMS 2012-13, it was envisaged that some more applications shall be included in the project to bring in more efficiency in the procurement operations. The details of these applications is as follows :-

These applications were implemented in all the agencies from RMS 2013-14 after detailed discussions with all the participants.

The details of process of payment under this system is as follows :-

• Participating bank will open dedicated accounts of Arhtias.
• Banks are issuing normal Debit cards to the Arhtia.
• Cards would be registered with banks and ePortal for Arhtias payment.
• Banks would provide swipe machines for transaction capturing, These machine would have GPRS card in it and battery backup of min 8 Hours.
• As and purchase happens Arhtia would swipe its card swipe machine.
• After swipe inspector will punch following information in the swipe machine
• After punching above information, the swipe machine will dial the server and approve the transaction after checking the particulars of the card and the purchase with the server in 7 to 10 seconds.
• After verification, approval/rejection slip would be generated by the swipe machine in duplicate, one slip will be given to Arhtia and the other slip will be retained by the Inspector for his record.
• Information recorded in server is immediately passed on to the approval utility which would be visible to the auditor once the batch is closed in the evening.
• Once batch is closed for a day, payment process can be initiated through payment utility for approval of payment by auditor/AO/DFSC.
• The payment approval process/steps are almost the same as presently done for Arhtia payment approval.
• After approval of payment by AO/DFSC, the Bank through Payment network (card Company) will push the payment to Arhtia account.
• After pushing payment to Arhtia accounts, confirmation of the payment would be sent to PUNGRAIN/payment approval utility for electronic reconciliation.

Manuals

• There is no additional cost of solution as costs of application and its running & maintenance is paid by the participating banks.
• There are no data entry errors in the system which is major hurdle in the process of computerization as Punjabi names can be spelled in many ways in English.
• There would be no delay in the payment to the  Arhtia and department would be in a position to fix responsibility of the person causing delay if at all.
• The clerical work being done by field level staff would be considerably reduced because the necessary reports for cross checking would be available electronically on line.
• The level of accuracy in payment process would improve since all the transactions would be done through computers.
• There would be no idle float in current accounts at field offices as the payment would be drawn from the single account and would be credited to Arhtia accounts. This will lead to saving of considerable amount of interest on cash credit limit.
• This system provides end to end electric process with least human intervention and no manual intervention is involved for transfer of money from agency account to Arthia account.
• This system is provided free of cost to all the stake holders, no charges are taken from the Arhtia and agencies.
• Not much investment is required to implement the system as all the operation are done by banks/utility and only 2 computers ,one printer and internet connection are required for this system.
• Complete feedback of payments made is given by the bank through portal i.e detailed reconciliation report of the bank is available bank wise, account wise, Arhtia wise, crop wise etc saving time and effort in a considerable way, which results in early finalization of accounts.
• The electronic data of procurement and payment is useful in further automation of storage and processing of food grains.
• In a nutshell this system with all the benefits is available without any cost to the Department but huge saving in interest and administrative costs.
• State Bank of India
• State Bank of Patiala
• Oriental Bank of Commerce
• Union Bank of India
• HDFC Bank
• Axis Bank
• Central Bank of India
• Corporation Bank
• Punjab & Sind Bank
• Issue of Bardana to Arhtia
• Recording of Private Purchase
• Recording of Agency Purchase-Already in operation
• Decision required to allocation of machine to agency or allotting agency wise password for machines etc.
• Recording of movement of food grains from Mandi.
• Payment of Transportation charges
• Payment of labor charges
• Payment of Mandi Taxes i.e Market fee & RDF
• Varity Purchased(Wheat/Paddy Grade-A/Paddy-common)
• No of bags
• Qty of the food grains
• Date of Purchase/auction
• Procedure for Registration of Kissan for Direct Payment