New Delhi, December 26 2016: To make Digital payments and a less cash society a mass movement in India,  government has announcd DigiDhan Melas in 100 different cities across the country over the next 100 days until March.  The DigiDhan Mela in Delhi on Christmas Day,  saw the participation of nearly 5000 people.
A total of 15000 winners were selected  in a lottery 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:  The National Paymentd Corporation of India (NPC) announced the winners of today’s lucky draw will receive a message from their banks and the reward money will be credited into their bank accounts over the next 24 hours. Check here  www.digidhanlucky.mygov.in .
Government also announced a slew of incentives to encourage general public to move from cash to a digital platform. Discounts will now be given for payments made on a digital platform at petrol stations, for insurance premium, tolls at national highways and for railway tickets. To reduce transaction costs of digital payments several fees and charges being levied so far by banks and on various government portals have either been reduced or done away with. Schemes have also been launched to improve supply of cards and POS machines in rural areas. Digidhan Melas, where all stakeholders of digital payment ecosystem exhibit and provide actual hand holding to general public in adopting digital payments have also been held to popularise the digital payments amongst the general public.
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 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.
JargoNote: Unversal Payment Interface (UPI), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) and RuPay are government driven digital payment solutions.  The latest, is  AEPS. Its  rollout   was  expected on December 25, but no announcementwas made.Customer feed Aadhaar number, scan finger on the biometric, approve the amount to be paid on the application and the payment will be transferred from his account to merchant’s account. The customer  need not  share bank account details as the application will detect the bank account linked to the Aadhaar number with help of Unified Payment Interface (UPI). Details here.