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During the press conference on December 3 in which he spoke about the restrictive measures provided for by the last DPCM and the last decree law on the emergency of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, among other things, also presented the plan “Italia Cashless Which was devised by the government to encourage the use of debit cards (ATMs) and credit cards and reward with refunds – the so-called “cashback” – those who make frequent use of electronic payments in physical stores.
One of the objectives of “Italia Cashless” is to modernize the country and promote the use of electronic payments, especially to combat tax evasion. The plan will be active from January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022, but the government has also introduced a specific initiative for the Christmas period.
– Read also: How the so-called “refund” works
From December 8 to December 31, Italian citizens who make at least 10 purchases with credit cards, debit cards, debit cards or Satispay, the well-known application for payments via smartphones, will be able to get a 10 percent refund of expenses incurred in stores. , up to a maximum of 150 euros. Refunds will be credited in the first months of 2021 by crediting the checking account
However, as of Monday, and again on Tuesday and Wednesday, many users reported failures in the social networks of the “IO” application, the application used to access all the digital services of the Public Administration and that since December 8 can be used to activate the “Refund” function for the Christmas period. For many the problems, which prevented them from associating their debit and credit cards with the application, were resolved on Tuesday, but for others they continued.
The reason for the initial problems seems to have been the wide participation, perhaps superior to what is technically manageable by the application. To access the service, you need to associate your cards and IBAN with the “IO” application: the application, however, had severe slowdowns and connection problems, and for many users it was not possible to complete operations.
The problems were found especially in accessing the “Portfolio” section of the application and in particular in registering the PagoBancomat circuit cards. Users who tried to register for that type of payment would see the message: “Could not search for payment methods, please try again later.”
– Read also: What are these “refunds”
The alternative to obtain the registration of your payments, and later obtain the “Cashback Italia” reimbursements, is to use the applications of the individual payment systems, such as Satispay or Nexi Pay, which works for all cards in the Nexi circuit. . There have been no reports of malfunctions or slowdowns when using these recording methods.
Difficulties in registering for the IO app have not only wasted time for users. Failures could also lead to some non-payment record issues. In fact, the platform only records payments that are made after midnight on the day the cards were enabled. For example, if on December 8 you managed to associate your debit and credit cards with the application, only payments made after December 9 were recorded.
However, the inability to register their cards in the IO application could lead users to postpone the activation of the service even for days, with the consequent postponement of the possibility of registering payments. Therefore, the government is thinking of extending the deadline for the Christmas refund from December 31, 2020 to January 6, 2021.
On Tuesday PagoPa, who runs the app, apologized for the inconvenience and promised to work hard to fix all the issues. Government sources said that nearly half a million new requests had been received to add a card to the Wallet section of the app, with peaks of around 6,000 visits per second. “At this moment – the government specified Tuesday – there are already about 1 million users who have loaded a payment method and are activating Cashback.”
The government then said that on the first day of registration the total number of subscribers to the Cashback program had been almost 2.3 million users. December 7 saw the peak of downloads for the IO app, which was downloaded by 7 million people.
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