The Centre has disbursed Rs 226 crore to more than 14 lakh consumers and 70,000 merchants in the last 90 days under Niti Aayog's two digital payment schemes, Lucky Grahak Yojana and DigiDhan Vyapar Yojana, for consumers and merchants respectively.
It is now gearing up to conclude the 100 days of DigiDhan melas — organised in 100 cities to popularise digital payments post demonetization — which will culminate in a mega draw on Babasaheb Ambedkar's birth anniversary on April 14.
A statement from Niti Aayog said the winners have been chosen from various walks of life, cutting across age, sex and economic status.
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi have emerged as the top five states with a maximum number of winners. Niti Aayog had earlier said that while a majority of the winners are in the age group of 21 to 30, a significant number are also above the age of 60.
"Public response to embrace digital payments is on a roll, giving a push to make India a less-cash economy, and the NITI Aayog's move to incentivise digital transactions by the people has paid dividends," the statement read.
As on March 30 (90th day) fairs have been held in 26 states and seven union territories, Niti Aayog said. 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.
"Over 5,000 financial institutions have reached 15 lakh citizens through the melas and at least 16,000 government and private institutions have been declared cashless," the statement read.
The statement also mentioned that there has been a 584 per cent increase in transactions made through the UPI.
"Payments using Adhaar have also seen an unprecedented jump of 1,352 per cent. Also, the BHIM App, the UPI payment App launched by the Prime Minister on December 30, last year, has been downloaded a record 18 million times. Besides, there has been an increase of nearly 13 per cent in the number of PoS machines sold since October 2016, indicating that more number of merchants across the country are willingly accepting digital payments," the statement read.
Around 8 billion transactions take place annually through digital payment methods, the statement said. The government is planning to increase this to 25 billion transactions in the current year to bring an end to the shadow economy by reducing black money flowing into the system, it stated.
