Amitabh Kant during the press conference on Thursday. (ANI)

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant today said the government will give awards worth Rs 340 crore to lucky users for digital payments. Announcing the government’s big cashless economy push, Kant said two schemes have been prepared to reward both consumers and merchants for doing digital payments. The two schemes are ‘Lucky Grahak Yojna’ for consumers and ‘Digi Dhan Vyapari Yojna’ for merchants.

In a press conference, the Niti Aayog CEO said the government has started a number of steps to combat the scourge of corruption and black money in the last two-and-a-half years.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will announce 15,000 winners of 1000 rupees each for the next 100 days from December 25. Moreover, there will be 7000 weekly awards with the maximum award of Rs 50,000 each for merchants under the ‘Digi Dhan Vyapari Yojna’. The total corpus of the awards would be Rs 340 crore, Kant said.

Kant further said that all government departments have started moving towards digital payments.

Amidst fears that the government is forcing people to start doing digital payments, the Ministry of Finance today clarified that digital transactions are parallel mechanisms, not a substitute for cash-based transactions.

Amidst fears that the government is forcing people to start doing digital payments, the Ministry of Finance today clarified that digital transactions are parallel mechanisms, not a substitute for cash-based transactions.

Charing the Fifth Meeting of the Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry of Finance on “Shift to Digital Transactions” today, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said “digital transactions are a parallel mechanism, not a substitute for cash transactions and cashless economy is actually a less cash economy as no economy can be fully cashless.”

Jaitley further said, “The government is trying to encourage digitization as much as possible because an excessive cash economy has its own social and economic costs and consequences.”

“Less cash can be gradually substituted to the possible extent through digital payments/transactions,” he added.

Jaitley also said the government and the RBI have taken several steps to bring down the cost of digital transactions. For example, MDR charges have been brought down significantly in case of transactions up to Rs 2,000 made through debit cards i.e. 0.25% in case of transactions below Rs 1000 and 0.50% in case of transactions between Rs 1,000 to Rs. 2,000, he said.

(With agency/PIB inputs)