Cashless Payments Champions competition launched

Under the slogan Use the card to win, a competition among cities and municipalities titled Cashless Payments Champions was launched on 1 July, organized by the Office for IT and eGovernment in cooperation with NALED and with the support of Mastercard and Visa. The local governments that prove most successful in motivating their citizens and businesses to pay fees, charges and taxes by using a card will win valuable prizes, including a children playground and website development.

The competition involves 60 cities and municipalities from the territory of Serbia that showed readiness to modernize their counters and introduce the service of cashless payments for citizens and businesses. The winners will be selected based on the number of performed card transactions on the local government counters, compared to the number of citizens, during the period from 1 July to 31 December

- This competition is one of the activities included in the new National Program for Countering Shadow Economy focusing on reduced use of cash, bearing in mind that cash serves as a generator of illegal trad and tax evasion. With these actions, we seek to develop a culture of cashless payments, build an efficient and transparent public administration and enable citizens to finalize all tasks in the process of obtaining documents or paying fees and charges at the counter of state institution they are visiting, rather than going to the bank or post office - said PhD Mihailo Jovanović, the Director of Office for IT and eGovernment.

Even though there are nearly 900,000 POS terminals operating in Serbia at various points, this number is still 2.5 times lower than the European average and there are many spots where cards are not accepted. This is why the 60 local governments that joined the competition have been provided with free installation of POS terminals and branding. The top five cities will receive a website "At citizens service" modeled by the Government of Serbia's website, while the prize for the winning local community will be a children playground worth 20,000 EUR.  

During the competition, all citizens who opt for paying with cards at local government counters will enjoy the lowest card fee of 45 RSD for payments under 4,500 RSD, and 1% for higher amounts. 

Citizens and businesses may check whether their local government has introduced the option of card payments, and find more information about the competition at the national web portal www.uzmiracun.rs.