In a move to fast-track digital payments post note ban, the Government on Thursday unveiled two incentive schemes, lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana, for consumers and merchants respectively, which will offer daily, weekly and mega cash awards worth Rs 340 crore from Christmas Day.
The move comes at a time when most consumers and merchants are learnt to have experienced difficulties with digital payment systems and remain hesitant to use them regularly.
Announcing the lucky Grahak Yojana where the highest award can go up to Rs 1 crore, 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, Kant said the first draw will be held on December 25 and the mega draw will be on April 14, the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar.
According to Niti Aayog, the scheme is not applicable for transactions done through private debit/credit cards and e-wallets of private companies. “Only consumers using Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Aadhaar-Enabled Payments (AEPS) and RuPay cards would be included in the draw. Consumers paying through private cards and digital wallets would not be included for the time-being,” Kant added.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will also 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.
“The focus of lucky Grahak and Digi-Dhan Yojana is on the poor, middle class and small businesses in order to bring them into the digital payments revolution,” said Kant. As per estimates, only 5 per cent Indians use digital payment modes.
For consumers, there will mega awards of Rs 1 crore, Rs 50 lakh and Rs 25 lakh. “In case of merchants, it has been fixed at Rs 5 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 lakh. Estimated expenditure of the scheme to incentivise digital payments is Rs 340 crore,” Kant said.
Unveiling all digital transaction details post demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, Kant said Point of Sale (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 271 per cent, while both UPI about and USSD witnessed increase of about 1,200 per cent each,” he added.
Niti Aayog also said all transactions between consumers and merchants; consumers and the Government agencies and all AEPS transactions will be considered for the incentivised scheme. More interestingly, business to business transactions are also included in the scheme.
The Niti Aayog boss also said that the transactions would be safe as there would be two-factor authentication for each transaction. “The NPCI has been directed to ensure a technical and security audit of the same to ensure that the technical integrity of the process is maintained,” he said, adding that the country cannot afford to have a parallel economy worth trillions of dollars as India grows to be a $10 trillion economy.