Government planning lucky draws to boost cashless transactions

Following up on the slew of incentives announced by the Finance Ministry on Thursday, the NITI Aayog has asked the National Payments Corporation of India to come up with a scheme of weekly and quarterly lucky draws to encourage digital transactions.

According to a statement of the Aayog, besides a weekly lucky draw of the transaction IDs generated in a particular week, a quarterly draw with grand prizes has been proposed. The statement said the scheme would focus on the poor, lower middle class and small businesses. The guidelines of this scheme have not been detailed yet.

According to a NITI Aayog statement, there has been a remarkable increase in both volume and amount of digital payment transactions since 9 November, when government demonetised high value notes of ₹ 500 and ₹ 1,000.
It is necessary to ensure that electronic payments are adopted by all sections of the society, it said.

“We need to encourage electronic payments and nudge the society to move from digital to digi-dhan,” NITI Aayog said.

Under the proposal all consumers and merchants using digital payments shall be eligible.

There will be two levels of incentive amounts available under the scheme. First, weekly lucky draw of the transaction IDs generated in that week. The contours of which are being finalised, it said.

NITI Aayog has also proposed quarterly draw for grand prizes and asked NPCI that while designing the scheme the focus will be on poor, lower middle class and small businesses.

All modes of digital payments – USSD, AEPS, UPI and RuPay Cards – will be eligible under the scheme. For merchants, transactions made on the POS machines installed at their locations would be considered, it said