When everyone was talking about going cashless, your gas cylinder guy must have insisted on cash payment while delivering the refill all these days. But not hereafter. You don't need to spend your precious cash that was drawn from a bank or ATM with much difficulty on gas payment from today.

A payment option is included in the online gas booking facility now and buying and paying for cooking gas (LPG) online will get consumers a discount of Rs5 per cylinder.

State-owned fuel retailers, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) will offer "an upfront discount of Rs5 on every LPG refill to all LPG customers who book and pay for it online," an official statement said on Tuesday.

To provide cashless transactions, the government had asked oil companies to pay consumers 0.75 percent discount on cashless filling of petrol and diesel at petrol pumps. This has now been extended to cooking gas (LPG).

"Customers can make payment through existing online modes - net banking, credit and debit cards - at the time of web booking their refills," the statement said.

Customers will get the discounted amount displayed on their screens. This net amount payable will be retail selling price minus incentive amount of Rs5 per cylinder.

"The net discounted amount will also be shown on the cash memo accompanying the home delivery of the LPG cylinder," it said.

A subsidised LPG cylinder of 14.2-kg currently costs Rs 434.71 in Delhi. A non-subsidised bottle of similar size, which consumer not having a subsidised connection, costs Rs 585. Even for the subsidised users, non-subsidised LPG cylinder is also they have to buy after exhausting their quota of 12 bottles at sub-market rates.

The oil firms offer a 0.75 percent discount on the price of petrol and diesel to consumers paying by cards or mobile wallets to push people towards digital payments in the face of a severe cash crunch brought in by the demonetisation of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes.

Such discount is credited to customer’s account by way of 'cash back' within maximum three working days.

Petrol currently costs Rs70.60 a liter in Delhi and the discount translates into 53 paisa. Similarly, on the price of Rs57.82 for diesel, the discount comes to 43 paisa per liter.

Stating that the discounts are aimed to encourage consumers to increasingly shift to digital payment modes to achieve the objective of no-cash or less-cash based transactions, the statement said, "The incentive will encourage more and more LPG consumers to go for cashless mode transactions."