Prime Minister Narendra Modi. | PTI
NEW DELHI: Giving a push to cashless transactions, the government on Sunday launched two new schemes to strengthen mobile banking and promote e-payments among consumers and traders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the launch of ‘Lucky Grahak Yojana’ and ‘Digi Dhan Vyapaar Yojana’, starting on December 25, as a Christmas gift.
“Fifteen thousand people will get rewards through a draw system, whereby each of the fifteen thousand winners will have one thousand rupees in their accounts and this will be not for today only; starting today this scheme will continue for the next 100 days,” said Modi in his Mann Ki Baat radio address.
He said throughout the entire country, be it villages or towns, the educated or the illiterate, there is an atmosphere of curiosity as to what is cashless, how cashless business can take place and how can one make purchases without using cash.
“To encourage digital payment and mobile banking, the Government of India is launching from today (Sunday) encouragement schemes for consumers as well as traders,” he said.
According to the scheme, every day fifteen thousand lucky winners will receive rewards of one thousand rupees each.
“In the next 100 days, lakhs of families are going to receive crores of rupees as gift, but you will be entitled to this gift only if you make use of mobile banking, e-banking, RuPay Card, UPI (Unified Payment Interface), USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) for digital payments,” Modi said.
The scheme will not cover those who use private credit cards and e-wallets of private companies.
The Prime Minister said the cashless transactions, or cashless trading, has increased by 200 to 300 percent and those businessmen who adopt digital transactions, who develop online payment process instead of cash transactions in their trade activities will get Income Tax rebate.
Source: The New Indian Express