Digidhan Mission: The government has extended the timeline of operations of the Digidhan mission till 2019-20 fiscal with the primary objective of promoting digital payments as well as to increase the acceptance of digital payment infrastructure.
In a recent notification, the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY), the implementing agency for the programme, said, “The operations of Digidhan Mission is hereby extended till March 31, 2020.”
Besides, extending the mission’s timeline, the ministry will also work on “policy measures and interventions to design tax incentives to promote digital payments and necessary sealing on the cash
payments”.
A senior government official said that another major area would be to devise mechanism for monitoring regional penetration of digital payments by geo-tagging digital payment transactions.
“The Digidhan mission will not only work on spreading literacy about online payments, but will also undertake promotion of best practices, processes, adoption and on-boarding systems across the ecosystem for a wide and quick uptake,” he explained.
Although the efforts made by the government led to a substantial uptick in digital transactions, the target of completing 2,500 crore transactions in FY18 could not be achieved. Last fiscal, the total number of such transactions stood at 2,104.70 crore. So far in FY19 (June 14), 411.18 crore transactions have been achieved.
“The notification aims at bridging the shortfalls so that we can achieve 2,500 crore digital transaction in FY19,” another senior official said.
To promote digital transactions, the government is providing incentives and cashbacks to merchants and consumers.
Last month, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) activated a cashback scheme for consumers and merchants of the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app.
Under the scheme, customers will get an initial cashback of Rs 51 on the firm successful completion of their transaction, as long as it is more than one rupee. Subsequently, they can get cashbacks of up to Rs 750 per month. Each unique transaction worth Rs 100 and above will yield a cashback of Rs 25, subject to a total monthly cap of Rs 500 in cashbacks.
Similarly, merchants will be entitled to a maximum cashback of Rs 1,000 per month. They will receive a cashback worth 10% of the value of each transaction, subject to a cap of Rs 50 per transaction. Also, they must record more than 10 credit transactions per month, each of which should be more than Rs 25, in order to be eligible for the cashback.