India

lekhaka-Deepak Tiwari

Government approved an incentive scheme to promote digital payments a few days ago. With a financial outlay of Rs 26 billion for promotion of RuPay Debit Cards, India can now give a tough competition to MasterCard and VISA which are known for levying additional cost for payments.

New Delhi, Jan 24: All those who laughed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching BHIM app, have bad news as today India has embraced digital payments quite comprehensively. Not just that the total digital transaction per annum has gone over $1.5 trillion, it has surpassed advanced countries by a few miles. Moreover, India’s digital transactions are more than the digital payments of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France put together.

The astounding numbers are an indication that India has emerged as a major digital economy in the global map. Moving successfully on the ‘Digital India Mission’ that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first tenure, India is achieving what the advanced countries could just dream of. Talking about the massive achievement, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India’s digital payments success story is also the success story of Digital India Mission.

Earlier last week, speaking at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, the Cabinet minister said that in December 2022, the digital payments transactions amounted to $1.5 trillion on an annualised basis. He was quoted saying: “If you compare total digital transactions in US, UK, Germany and France and combine them, India’s figures are more than that.”

UPI success story

When India received its tech-savvy Prime Minister it was set to move forward into the digital revolution. A plethora of programs were launched to boost digital infrastructure necessary before launching UPI in 2016. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had then dreamt of safe and secure digital transactions for the nation. With the success of UPI, his dreams have come true as today it is the most popular payment system for Indians.

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Since UPI has emerged as one of the most popular payment tools in India, several countries too have started asking for it. The brain behind UPI, the National Payments Corporation of India or NPCI has powered multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application and merged several banking features to make payment seamless for all.

If it was not the Indian government’s promotion of digital payments things may not have been this better. Not just building the required infrastructure and tools but offering incentives has been at the centre of the success of UPI.

Just recently on January 11, 2023, the Indian government approved the incentive scheme to promote digital payments. With a financial outlay of Rs 26 billion for the promotion of RuPay Debit Cards, India wants to give tough competition to MasterCard and VISA which are known for levying additional cost for payments.

Story first published: Tuesday, January 24, 2023, 12:43 [IST]