For promotion of digital payments, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has introduced the Incentive Scheme for promotion of RuPay Debit Cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions for the current financial year. This was stated by the Union Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on 13 February. The Minister stated that there has been a growth of more than 200% in digital payment volume during the last four years since 2018-19.
Further, as per the data sourced from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI transactions registered in FY 21-22 were 45 billion, showing 8 times growth in last 3 years and 50 times growth in last 4 years. The Minister stated that the Scheme provides financial incentive to Banks for promoting point-of-sale (PoS) and e-commerce transactions using RuPay Debit Cards and person-to- merchant (P2M) transactions of low value (i.e up to Rs. 2,000) on the BHIM-UPI platform. The Scheme also promotes UPI lite and UPI 123 PAY as economical and user-friendly digital payment solutions. MeitY has allocated Rs. 2,600 crore for the Scheme for FY 2022-23.
The incentive Scheme has promoted digital payments by incentivising Banks to build a robust digital payments ecosystem and to promote RuPay Debit Cards and BHIM-UPI as low-cost digital payments mode across all sectors and segments of population, the Minister stated.
