To promote digital-transactions in the country the government on Thursday announced two schemes that will give cash awards to customers as well as traders for using cashless-transaction modes in the country. A budget of Rs 340 crore has been allocated for this purpose.
Under the ‘Lucky Grahak Yojana’ the government will announce 15,000 winners everyday for the prize money of Rs 1, 000 each. The first lucky draw will be held on December 25. The maximum prize of Rs 1 lakh can be won in this category.
The lucky award schemes have been launched to promote only small transaction between Rs 50 and Rs 3,000.
To encourage traders to take digital payments from customers, the government has launched ‘Digi Dhan Vyapari Yojna’ with 7,000 weekly awards and a maximum award of Rs 50,000.
A part from daily prizes, the government will also hold a mega draw on April 14, 2017 to announce three prizes of Rs 1 crore, Rs 50 lakh and Rs 25 lakh for the consumers under the ‘Lucky Grahak Yojana’ and Rs 50 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 5 lakh for traders under the ‘Digi Dhan Vyapari Yojana.’ The total cost for all the announced schemes is estimated to be Rs 340 crore.
All the awards would be given for payments made through Unified Payment Interface or UPI, USSD, Aadhar enabled payment systems and RuPay cards. This means that customers using private party credit or debit cards would be ineligible for getting awards.
Ever since the government announceddemonetisationof high denomination currency notes, cash crunch has crippled the Indian economy as majority of Indians prefer cash transactions over digital payments. To counter this situation, the government has been trying to incentivise people to use digital payment gateways through various schemes.
On December 9, finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced a number of benefits for consumers making purchase of fuel, rail tickets and other services. According to government, transactions through e-wallets have risen by 271 per cent while those through UPI have risen by 119 per cent post demonetisation.
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