Digi Dhan Abhiyan: Over 25 lakh people in rural India adopt digital modes of payments

More than 25 lakh people in rural areas of the country have adopted digital modes of payments through 'Digi Dhan Abhiyan' programme, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) said on Tuesday.

Over 55,000 merchants have started offering digital payment options to rural customers across various districts and blocks in India, the ministry said in a statement.

"Achieving the 25 lakh mark in such a short time is an indication of the pace at which digital adoption is gaining momentum among rural citizens," Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, MeitY, said.

"The speed and scale at which digital transformation is taking place in India is paving way for a digitally empowered, participative and inclusive society," she added.

Over 70 per cent of the rural citizens have adopted e-wallets, 16 per cent opted for Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and the rest looked at Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Adhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) and Cards/Point of Sale (PoS), the data with the ministry showed.

"Similarly, more than 85 per cent of the merchants have adopted the e-Wallet system and 13 per cent have opted for Unified Payment Interface (UPI)," the ministry said.

The 'Digi Dhan Abhiyan' aims to reach out to more than one crore rural citizens, cover two lakh Common Services Centres (CSC) in rural and semi-urban areas and also reach to 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats across the country.

The real time update on the number of rural citizens and merchants digitally empowered can be seen on the Digital Jagriti Portal -- www.digitaljagriti.in -- set up to monitor the real time statistics of the CSC outreach.