In G20 document, World Bank lauds India's digital public infrastructure

India's JAM Trinity has propelled financial inclusion rate from 25 per cent in 2008 to over 80 per cent of adults in last six years, a journey shortened by up to 47 years owing to DPIs: WB

Led by digital public infrastructure (DPI), India has achieved in just six years what would have taken 47 years otherwise, the World Bank said in its new document on Thursday.

According to the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion document, India's JAM Trinity has propelled the financial inclusion rate from 25 per cent in 2008 to over 80 per cent of adults in the last six years, a journey shortened by up to 47 years owing to DPIs.

"While DPIs' role in this leapfrogging is undoubtable other ecosystem variables and policies that build on the availability of DPIs were critical. These included interventions to create a more enabling legal and regulatory framework, national policies to expand account ownership, and leveraging Aadhaar for identity verification," it said.

Since its launch, the number of PM Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts opened tripled from 147.2 million in March 2015 to 462 million by June 2022. 56 per cent of these accounts are held by women.

The Jan Dhan Plus programme encourages low-income women to save, resulting in over 12 million women customers (as of April 2023) and a 50 per cent increase in average balances in just five months, as against the entire portfolio in the same time period.

According to the Centre's release, "It is estimated that by engaging 100 million low-income women in savings activities, public sector banks in India can attract approximately Rs 25,000 crore in deposits."

It added that more than 9.41 billion transactions valuing about Rs 14.89 trillion were transacted in May 2023 alone. "For the fiscal year 2022–23, the total value of UPI transactions was nearly 50 per cent of India's nominal GDP."

"The DPI in India has also enhanced efficiency for private organizations through reductions in the complexity, the cost and the time taken for business operations in India," it said.

According to industry estimates, banks' costs of onboarding customers in India decreased from $23 to $0.1 with the use of DPI.