Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation on November 8, 2016, a slew of measures have been announced to encourage the common man to move to digital payments in the face of a severe cash crunch. Besides shopping for your daily essentials, or booking movie tickets online, these discounts for online payments apply to a wide range of services like insurance, petrol, cooking gas and railway bookings. Here's a look at some of the must-know discounts and incentives that will encourage you to go digital.
1. Cooking gas: Buying and paying for an LPG cylinder online will fetch you a discount of Rs 5 per cylinder. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum have started offering this discount to online customers. You can pay using net banking, debit or credit cards during online booking.
2. Petrol and diesel: Make a digital payment for petrol or diesel and get a discount of 0.75 per cent. The discount will be credited to your account by way of 'cashback' within three working days, the Indian Oil Corporation had said.
3. Insurance: The government has offered discounts of up to 10 per cent in the premium for policies of public sector general insurance companies and eight per cent for life policies of Life Insurance Corporation, sold through online customer portals. The discounts are applicable only to new policies and not renewals.
4. Railway ticket: Passengers who buy tickets online will receive accident insurance coverage of up to Rs 10 lakh for free. They are also eligible for a five per cent discount on accommodation, catering and retiring rooms at the station.
5. Season ticket on suburbs: Starting January 1, 2017, seasonal and monthly tickets of suburban railway tickets are eligible for a discount of 0.5 per cent if paid digitally.
6. Toll plaza discounts: National highway users will get a discount of 10 per cent on digital payments at toll plazas.
