Going Cashless: Rs 226 Crore Awarded Under Lucky Grahak, DigiDhan Schemes

New Delhi: Niti Aayog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's premier policy think tank, on Wednesday, said that more than 14 lakh consumers and 77,000 merchants were rewarded with Rs 226 crore for embracing digital payments since the launch of its two incentive schemes Lucky Grahak Yojana and DigiDhan Vyapar Yojana - on 25th December 2016. 

The National Institution for Transforming India, popularly known as called NITI Aayog, has been organizing DigiDhan Melas in 100 cities over a period of 100 days in an attempt to encourage people from all walks of life to embrace digital transactions.

The program which remains open till April 14, 2017 picks 5,000 daily winners and over 14,000 weekly winners based on a lucky draw from a pool of customers and merchants using RuPay Card, BHIM/UPI and Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service.

The 100 days of the DigiDhan Melas will end with the Mega Draw on April 14th.

"Today around 8 billion transactions take place annually through digital payment methods. The government is planning to increase this to 25 billion transactions in the current year to bring an end to the shadow economy by reducing black money flowing into the system," a press release by the Niti Aayog said.

The think tank said that since demonetization in November last year, there has been a 584 per cent increase (0.3 to 4.5 million) in transactions made through the UPI. In this same period, payments using Adhaar have jumped 0.7 million to 2.7 million transactions, a jump of 1,352 per cent 

BHIM, a UPI payment app launched by the Prime Minister on 30th December 2016, has been downloaded a record 18 million times since its launch, Niti Aayog said on Wednesday.

UPI is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone.