President of the Council Conte proves to be an excellent testimonial for the IO app, which sets download records: everyone wants Christmas Cashback, but with the app you can do much more.
The most popular app of the moment is certainly IO, the official application of the Italian Public Administration through which you can do many things. Among them, and this is the reason for so much notoriety in recent days, subscribe to the Italia Cashless program and get Christmas Cashback, ordinary Cashback and participate in the Super Cashback draw.
Yesterday evening, at dinner time, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte confirmed in a press conference that the IO app will be needed to get the Cashback and his words, apparently, were heard by Italians who flocked to the app's official website, Play Store and App Store to download it. Yesterday, December 3, 2020, there were 549,979 downloads of the app, and today there will probably be even more. Total downloads of the app, both Android and iOS, amount to nearly 5.5 million: 3.9 million downloads for the Android app and 1.6 million for the iOS app. It's no coincidence, given the boom in downloads, that in the last few hours reports of IO app malfunctions have also increased. But what is IO used for, besides asking for Cashback?
App IO: everything you can do with it
The first thing you can do with the IO app, the most interesting at the moment, is to sign up to the Italia Cashless program to get a refund of up to 150 euros of Christmas Cashback and, starting from January 2021, a refund of 1150 euros per semester of ordinary Cashback.
The start date for tracking purchases for cashback purposes has been set for December 8, so there are just a few days to get ready. Those who still don't know how to sign up for the IO app can read our guide.
The second thing you can do with the IO app is apply for government bonuses like the Holiday Bonus disbursed this summer. And, in fact, the app's previous peak download was July 1, with 195,924 apps downloaded. With this system, 1,726,453 vacation vouchers were generated, for a countervalue of 763,107,600 euros.
In the case of the vacation bonus, however, there was an obvious information deficit since, compared to 1.7 million vouchers generated, only 742,151 were used. A sign that many users didn't fully understand how to use the Holiday Bonus.
The third thing you can do with the IO app is to use it as a collection center for all the messages coming from the Public Administration and as a tool to streamline many bureaucratic procedures, without having to go to the counter. We can, for example, set a reminder for the expiry of an identity card, pay the car tax and much more through IO.
About payment: by registering one or more credit or debit cards (a necessary procedure, among other things, to obtain cashback) we can also use the pagoPA platform, integrated in the app, to pay for a myriad of local, regional and national public services.
Everything we're going to pay through the IO app, from the parking fine to the children's school lunch, will remain in the history of operations that we can consult at any time.
Finally, the IO app of the Public Administration can also be set up to receive security notifications such as those of the Civil Protection.
App IO: SPID or CIE required
Let's remember, finally, that in order to use the IO app, you need to identify yourself through an electronic identification method. That is, through SPID or CIE, Electronic Identity Card. Those who don't know these tools yet can read our SPID guide.