Punjab National Bank suspends digital payment incentives on fuel purchases
New Delhi:
Oil marketing companies (OMCs) have stopped offering incentive of 0.75 per cent while buying fuel through any digital mode at petrol pumps, state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) has stopped passing benefits to its customers .
The city-headquartered lender stopped passing on the benefits since last month, saying the facility has been withdrawn by the OMCs.
Bharat Petroleum Corporation has informed that OMCs (Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum) have decided to discontinue the 0.75 per cent incentive on fuel purchases through all digital modes of payment, as per a notification by PNB on their website .
The lender said it has stopped giving fuel incentives of 0.75 per cent with effect from May this year.
PNB said, “Punjab National Bank has implemented the above changes with effect from May 10, 2022 and as such no incentive will be given to the cardholders for their transactions at PNB POS (Point of Sale) terminal at any fuel outlet.” “
The government had asked three retailers to offer a discount of 0.75 per cent on card payments for fuel purchases after a widespread cash crunch following the demonetisation of 86 per cent of currency notes in circulation in late 2016.
Digital payments include making payments through credit cards, debit cards, online payments and other modes such as the UPI (Unified Payments Interface) application of Paytm, Google Pay and PhonePe.
Initially, the fuel incentive of 0.75 per cent was removed while paying through credit cards after such facilities were withdrawn on debit card payments.
OMCs have now withdrawn the fuel incentive facility on all other digital payments as well.
A discount of 0.75 per cent was offered to those using plastic money to buy petrol and diesel with effect from December 13, 2016. The discount was given through cashback, which was credited to the buyer’s account within three days of the transaction.