Govt. announces ‘awards’ to encourage digital payments.
To promote digital payments post demonetisation, the government will give daily and weekly cash awards totalling Rs. 340 crore for consumers as well as merchants beginning Christmas Day.
Announcing ‘Lucky Grahak Yojana’ and ‘Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana’, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said both the schemes would cover small transactions between Rs. 50 and Rs. 3,000 to encourage every section of society to move to digital payments.
Terming it a ‘Christmas gift’ to the country, Mr. Kant said the first draw will happen on December 25 and the mega draw on April 14, birth anniversary of Dr. B R Ambedkar.
National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) will announce 15,000 winners of Rs 1,000 each for the next 100 days, starting December 25. There will be 7,000 weekly awards each for consumers and merchants.
P2P and B2B transfers won't be covered and neither would be credit cards or e-wallets, he said.
“As per estimates, only 5 per cent Indians use digital payment modes. We have a low tax-base, large informal economy with 400 million smart phones and 25 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts,” Mr. Kant said.
Giving details on digital transactions post demonetisation of Rs. 1,000 and old Rs.500 notes, he said PoS transactions witnessed a jump of 95 per cent since November 8 (till December 7).
RuPay Card transactions were up 316 per cent and e-wallet by 271 per cent, while both Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) witnessed increase of about 1,200 per cent each.
All forms of transactions through UPI, USSD, Aadhar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) and RuPay cards will be eligible for lucky draws, he said.
Source: The Hindu
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