Making Digital Payments a Mass Movement in India

Nearly 10 lakh citizens get reward money over Rs.153.5 crore for embracing Digital Payments It has been 58 days since the launch of NITI Aayog’s two incentive schemes – Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana to promote digital payments and the public response has been quite encouraging. The initiative to make Digital Payments a mass movement in India through the two schemes has made a headway across the country with more and more people adopting digital transactions. According to the latest figures released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which has been executing the schemes, nearly 10 lakh consumers and merchants have been disbursed over Rs.153.5 crore as reward money till 20th February, 2017. Highlights: • Among the 9.8 lakh winners are more than 9.2 lakh consumers and 56,000 merchants. • 120 consumers have won prize money worth Rs. 1 lakh each • 4,000 merchants have won Rs. 50,000 prize money each • Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi have emerged as the top five states/ Union Territory(s) with maximum number of winners • Active participation was seen among females and males across regions • Winners belong to diverse socio-economic backgrounds, from farmers, merchants, small entrepreneurs, professionals, housewives, students to retired persons. • While majority of the winners are in the age group of 21 to 30, a significant number are also above 60 years of age. • The diversity in age of winners is from 15 to 66 years, challenging the notion that the old find it difficult to embrace technology to adopt digital payments. The winners have their own stories to tell it all as to how the switch over to digital payments has been le and how it has made the life easier for them. Sabir, a 22-year-old cab driver from Delhi won Rs. 1,00,000 under Lucky GrahakYojana for consumers. Digital payments are a blessing in disguise for him because he has to take care of his mother and differently-abled sister after the demise of his father and doesn’t have time to stand in lines at the bank. Bhim Singh, a 29-year-old wheat farmer from Hissar in Haryana and winner under this initiative, now uses digital payments for buying supplies from wholesalers. Jayanthi SF, from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, a 29-year-old engineering student and mother to a six-year-old, is a proud winner of Rs. 1,00,000 under the scheme. Among the merchants, Damodar Prasad Khandelwal, a 42-year-old grocery store owner from Alwar in Rajasthan, won Rs. 50,000 in the weekly prize under Digi-DhanVyaparYojana for merchants. Manju R Gowda, a 32-year-old fast-food restaurant owner in Mumbai is another winner of Rs. 50,000 under this scheme. An analysis of the reward data also reveals winners as belonging to a wide geographical cross-section, including rural and urban areas spread across every State. NITI Aayog has been organizing DigiDhanMelas at 110 cities across India, beginning December 25th, 2016.. It will go on every day until April 14, 2017. Till date, 59 DigiDhanMelas have been organized to take the digital payments movement to the masses across the country. Background: NITI Aayog launched two schemes on December 25, 2016 – Lucky GrahakYojna (LGY) for consumers and Digi-DhanVyaparYojna (DVY) for merchants to incentivize them and promote digital payments. The two schemes shall remain open till April 14, 2017. There are 15,000 daily winners qualifying for total prize money of Rs. 1.5 crore. In additional to this there are over 14,000 weekly winners qualifying for total prize money of over Rs. 8.3 crore every week. Customers and merchants using RuPay Card, BHIM / UPI (Bharat Interface for Money / Unified Payments Interface), USSD based *99# service and Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service (AePS) are eligible for wining daily and weekly lucky draw prizes.