Over 25 lakh rural citizens enroll for Digital Payments

The Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) rural Common Service Center (CSC) network through its massive outreach program ‘DigiDhan Abhiyan’ has enrolled over 25 lakh rural citizens for digital payments. Over 55,000 merchants have started offering digital payment options to rural customers across various districts and blocks in India.

The DigiDhan Abhiyan aims to reach over 10 million rural citizens through this massive outreach program. The campaign aims to cover 2 lakh Common Service Centers (CSC) in rural and semi-urban areas, and also reach out to 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayat across the country. The centers will cover one member from each household and will cater to 40 households in a catchment area.

An overview of the current data available with the Ministry of Electronics & IT shows that more than 70% rural citizens have adopted the methods of e-wallets, 16% opted for Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and the rest looked at Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Adhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) & Cards/Point of Sale (PoS). Similarly, more than 85% of the merchants have adopted the e-Wallet system and 13% have opted for Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

Speaking on this milestone achievement, Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) said, “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. The speed and scale at which digital transformation is taking place in India is paving the way for a digitally empowered, participative and inclusive society.”

The real-time update on the number of rural citizens & merchants digitally empowered can be seen on the Digital Jagriti Portal - a web portal set-up to monitor the real-time statistics of the CSC outreach.