The Bangalore City Traffic Police will soon accept card payments from traffic violators via Point of Sale (PoS) machines. The machines will be eventually installed at all 44 Traffic Police Stations and Automation Center at Traffic headquarters in Bangalore. Bengaluru City Traffic Police set to accept card payments from violators. PoS machine to enable card payments. pic.twitter.com/MvoG28Tcor — BTP (@blrcitytraffic) December 21, 2016 Users will be able to use the facility to pay fines either by debit or credit cards. As of now, the facility is available at the newly inaugurated K.G. Halli Traffic Police Station. The feature should be useful especially given the lack of liquid currency post demonetization. However, that the PoS machines are only available at police stations is a disappointment, and it would have been more useful if the machines were available with the field cops. Note that Bangalore Traffic Police has been pretty quick in adopting new technology to aid its initiatives. The agency had previously introduced Public Eye web and mobile applications, letting citizens report traffic violations by uploading a picture along with the vehicle registration number, type of violation, place and type of violation. The Bangalore Police is also quite active on Twitter and takes citizens’ complaints, most notably their takedown of fake e-commerce site BigSop.com back in 2014. Nationally too, the adoption of digital technology for aiding police work has been increasing, with initiatives like Delhi police’s Android app for women’s safety called Himmat, UP’s WhatsApp based complaint portal where users have…
