E-payment reward: 10 lakh users get 153.5 crore

The winners include over 9.2 lakh consumers and 56,000 merchants, Kant said, citing the figures by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which has been executing the schemes, launched on Dec 25 last year in the aftermath of the government’s Nov 8 demonetisation move.

The scrapping of the large currency notes of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes created an unprecedented crash crunch with people across the country queuing up outside banks and ATMs to withdraw their own money. The government then encouraged people to go for digital transactions and launched the Lucky GrahakYojna for consumers and Digi-DhanVyaparYojna for merchants to incentivise them and promote digital payments. 

The schemes will remain open until April 14. There are 15,000 daily winners qualifying for total prize money of Rs 1.5 crore, as per the schemes. There are over 14,000 weekly winners qualifying for total prize money of over Rs 8.3 cr every week. 

Customers and merchants who use RuPay Card, BHIM/UPI, USSD based *99# service and Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service are eligible for winning daily and weekly lucky draw prizes. Until Feb 20, some 120 consumers have won prize money worth Rs 1 lakh each, Kant said, adding that nearly 4,000 merchants have also won price money of Rs 50,000 each. 

“It has been 58 days since the launch of NITI Aayog’s two incentive schemes …and the public response has been quite encouraging,” he said. “The initiative to make digital payments a mass movement in India through the two schemes has made headway across the country with more and more people adopting digital transactions.” 

The NCPI data shows Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi having emerged as the top five places with most winners. The winners, belong to diverse socio-economic backgrounds - farmers, merchants, small entrepreneurs, professionals, housewives, students and retired persons. The majority are in the age group of 21 to 30.