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At the end of 2020, the first experimental phase of the “state cashback” was also completed, the initiative that provides for reimbursements to those who make purchases through ATMs and credit cards in physical stores (and not online). This first phase was called “Christmas Extra Cashback”, an operation that began on December 8 and ended on December 31, providing refunds of 10 percent on electronic payments made in physical stores, with a minimum of 10 payments. , a maximum refund of 15 euros per payment and a total refund of 150 euros per person.
The initiative was born as part of a broader plan, called “Italia Cashless”, which aims to promote the spread of electronic and digital payments, increase the level of digitization in the country and allow the recovery of tax evasion. . On this last point, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte insisted again on Wednesday, when he said that the cashback and other “measures on digital payments” “will make us recover resources.” In addition, the initiative was also presented as an incentive to consumption and an aid to families in a period of economic difficulty caused by the pandemic.
The government estimates that in total the cashback will cost just over € 4.7 billion, divided as follows: € 227 million for the December 2020 experimental phase, € 1.7 billion for 2020 and € 3 billion for 2021. It will probably be It will take years to understand if the “Italia Cashless” plan will have had the desired effects. For now, however, it is possible to try to understand what will happen in the coming months and to tell how the experimental phase that ended in December was like.
– Read also: The bet behind the state cashback
What’s up today, January 1?
Therefore, the reimbursement will become fully operational on January 1 and will end on June 30, 2022. It will be divided into three six-month phases (January 1 to June 30, 2021; July 1 to December 31, 2021; January 1 to June 30, 2022), each of which will give the possibility of having a refund of 150 euros, with conditions similar to those of December (10 percent refund on each electronic payment in physical stores, 15 euros maximum refund per payment) but an important difference: they will be 50 transactions are required during the six months to unlock the refund, and no longer 10 as in December 2020.
Those who have already signed up for the rebate during the month of December 2020 do not have to do anything. You are already automatically enrolled in the next phases of the initiative and no further steps are required. In the “Portfolio” section of the IO application, the application that is the main tool for obtaining refunds, registered users will see a second card linked to cashback and related to refunds for the first semester of 2021. After that semester, On July 1, 2021, a third tab will appear and then a fourth from 2022.
The “Super Cashback” classification should also appear in the IO application, another program of the cashback initiative according to which the 100,000 people who have made the most transactions each semester will receive a bank transfer of 1,500 euros. To get back to the first hundred thousand, only the number of transactions counts, not the amount of money spent. In the application, therefore, it will be possible to see your place in the ranking.
It is also convenient to solve some technical problems that arose during the month of December: one of them refers to the fact that in some cards (the calls co-badge, which bear the logos of two different payment circuits), the refund runs the risk of not being counted in contactless payments. PagoPA claims that a solution will be adopted in January 2021.
– Read also: The problems of “cashback” with contactless
In addition, in the first months of the year, smartphones such as Apple Pay and Google Pay will also be added to the payment methods accepted for cashback (as long as the corresponding card is registered with IO).
How was the Christmas refund?
Membership was very good, so much so that in the first days of the initiative, between December 7 and 9, users encountered numerous annoying malfunctions, which were later resolved gradually. In particular, it was difficult and sometimes impossible to register credit and debit cards in the IO app and enable them for refund. Giuseppe Virgone, CEO of PagoPA, the public company that manages IO, recently wrote a very technical article to explain the origin of the breakdowns and how they were resolved. There were other less serious problems, like the one mentioned above related to contactless payments, but after the first few days things were generally pretty good.
From the beginning of December until today, the IO application has gone from 3.5 million downloads to more than 9 million, and the users who have joined the cashback are 5.7 million. It is still too early to say whether the general objectives of the “Italia Cashless” plan have been achieved, especially those of the emergence of blacks, about which experts are quite skeptical. But the numerous IoT downloads, which make public administration services accessible via smartphones, are a good sign when it comes to digitization.
In recent days, some newspapers have used membership numbers to deduce that the funds allocated for the Christmas cashback may not be enough: if the 5.7 million members got the maximum cashback of 150 euros, the 227 million euros allocated would not be enough and, as the cash refund regulation explains, “if the aforementioned financial resource does not allow the full payment of the refund owed, it is reduced proportionally.”
In fact, judging from the data we have so far, it is quite unlikely that all members will reach the maximum payback. The Presidency of the Council periodically communicates to the press agencies some information on the progress of the initiative (using the formula for which the data would come from “Palazzo Chigi sources”). According to the latest data, updated as of December 30, the total cashback accrued by citizens (defined as “potential”) amounts to 198 million euros. However, not all members have reached the 10 transactions necessary to unlock the refund, and on December 30 the cashback that would actually be paid (to those who have made at least 10 transactions) amounts to 157 million euros. Therefore, although it is not yet certain that the expenses of the last days do not exceed the budget, it is likely that the 227 million allocated will be sufficient.
For users to see the full amount of the December refund in the IO app, it will take a few days (around ten), starting on January 1, to allow the registration of payments made in the last days of December. At that time, bank transfers for those who have made at least 10 transactions should arrive in February 2021.
– Read also: Someone is downloading the wrong money back app, paying for it
And the receipt lottery?
The receipt lottery is another of the initiatives contemplated by the Italia Cashless plan: it is a raffle system based on purchase receipts, with prizes of up to 5,000 euros. The lottery was also supposed to start on January 1, but was postponed “for a few weeks,” at least until February. It was mainly the merchants who requested the postponement, who asked for more time to adapt the electronic cash register software.
To join the lottery, you must go to the site that the government has specifically created, click on the “Enter Now” section and enter your tax code. The system will then produce a “lottery code” that must be memorized and that, when the program is active, will be shown to merchants at the time of making purchases: each euro corresponds to a virtual lottery ticket, for a maximum of a thousand tickets per single receipt.
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