In 2016, you can swipe your card to pay a traffic challan on the spot

Making e-payments has more or less become a norm these days. Yet, citizens are often forced to find the nearest automated teller machines (ATM) to draw money for cash to pay fines for traffic violations.

But the city traffic police are all set to bring in new systems that will allow violators to swipe their debit/credit cards to settle challans on the spot.

In 2007, BCTP were the first in India to arm themselves with smartphones and a wireless challan printer. But violators have to pay a cash fine. This will soon change. When the contract with Blackberry expires in the first quarter of 2016, Bengaluru City Traffic Police (BCTP) will opt for a custom-made Android-based Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

“We are looking at four features in the new device. It should have an application to connect with the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) database, a good camera, an inbuilt printer and a facility to make online payments by swiping cards,” said M.A. Saleem, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic).

A tender will be floated shortly.

When New Delhi and Hyderabad have carried out pilot projects, they had a card swiping machine in their patrol vehicles. However, the practice was discontinued. Bengaluru will be the first city to come up with a PDA that will act as a mobile surveillance, database and payment device.

At present, traffic cops posted at important junctions are given digital cameras to capture evidence of violations, which are uploaded to the TMC database. TMC fires challans to the registered addresses of vehicle owners.

The new PDA will come equipped with a camera that will send a geo-tagged photograph to the TMC database.

Start experimenting with hand-held devices in 2004

Zero in on Blackberry in 2008

Contract with Blackberry in 2010

Blackberry + wireless challan printer given to all cops of assistant sub-inspector rank and above

650 sets in operation

Android platform

Cloud-based application

Real-time enforcement management

Debit/Credit card reader and swiping machine

In-built challan printer

Camera that sends geo-tagged photos to database