ProMASS: Dec 26, 2016: Aiming to encourage Digital Payments, the Government of India, launched the Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana awards at the Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on December 25. Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley and Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Ravi Shankar Prasad launched the awards in the presence of other distinguished persons including with famous India Cricketer Gautam Gambhir and eminent athlete and silver medallist at the Paralympics 2016, Deepa Malik.
To make Digital payments and a less cash society a mass movement in India, the DigiDhan Mela will take place in 100 different cities across the country over the next 100 days until March. This DigiDhan Mela witnessed the participation of nearly 5000 people.
A total of 15000 winners were selected under 4 broad categories (USSD, UPI, AEPS, RuPay) from the 8 crore digital transactions that took place between 9th November 2016 to 21st December 2016. Citizens may check if they have received the reward by logging on to: www.digidhanlucky.mygov.in.
Speaking on the occasion, Arun Jaitley emphasized on that fact that “India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world despite the slowdown. India has huge potential to transform the economy in to a digital one. Of 125 crore people, 75 crore use credit and debit cards. Of these, 45 crore are active users. With incentive schemes like Lucky Grahak Yojana and DigiDhan Vyapar Yojana, the Digital India movement will certainly strengthen the country’s economic backbone.”
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, said “Already 109 crore Indians are registered with the Aadhaar, 50 crore people have access to internet and 35 crore people are smart-phones users. We are now working on a mission to provide training to over 1 crore rural citizens, through 2 lakh Common Service Centres. Over the last 10 days, we have been able to provide training to 76,99,174 citizens and 2,20,741 merchants and traders.”
To give a fillip to the digital payment campaign, it was decided to further incentivise people who actively adopt digital platform for making day to day financial transactions. NITI Aayog, along with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) as its implementation partner, launched two major schemes – Lucky Grahak Yojana for consumers and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana for merchants. By providing monetary rewards for undertaking Digital Transactions made with Rupay cards, AEPS, UPI Apps and USSD, these schemes attempt to attract general public and facilitate significant behavioural change among public.
Courtesy: AIR NEWS