Chief Executive Officer of Niti Aayog, or the National Institute of Transforming India, Amitabh Kant said that plastic money, ATMs and Point-of-Sale machines will be redundant in India by 2020. Kant, speaking at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2017 on Saturday, said India can use technology to leapfrog in various sectors like education, health and others.

“The cards will become redundant in India as every Indian will do transaction just by using his thumb and mobile phones. The transaction would be done in just thirty seconds through Aadhar-enabled technology,” Kant said.

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The Niti Aayog CEO also spoke of black money and said that demonetisation had pushed India towards making more digital payments. The central government had demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8. Kant said around 85% of money transactions in the country were done with cash before November 8.

“It is impossible for India to become a ten trillion economy like this where two trillion dollar is a formal economy and another one trillion dollar is an informal black economy. It is not possible for India to grow before demonetisation.” Kant added that people in rural areas could utilise technology “much quicker and much faster than literate people living in urban cities”.

India has around 662 million debit cards and 25 million credit cards in use currently, according to Business Standard. It has around 300 million mobile phone users who have Internet access.

The Centre has been pushing digital cash transactions heavily after demonetisation, a move they said was done to smoke out black money holders in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also introduced Bharat Interface for Money, an Aadhar card-based app for making payments. However, the Centre has been criticised heavily for the move since the country suffered a massive cash crunch after demonetisation. Many rural areas continue to face a shortage of currency, two months after demonetisation was announced.