National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for all retail payment systems in the country, has disbursed over Rs 245 crore worth of prize money to about 18 lakh winners under the NITI Aayog’s Lucky Draw schemes for consumers and merchants. This initiative was announced to encourage people to carry out more digital transactions.

A. P. Hota, MD & CEO, NPCI said, “The transaction repository of the first draw on December 25, 2016, which was at 6.39 crore, increased to 28.32 crore on the 97th draw held yesterday at Agra. The 98th draw is scheduled in Goa and 99th in Allahabad. The 100th and final mega draw is likely to take place during the period from April 9 to April 14, 2017. The date and venue is being finalised by Government of India.”

There are three mega prizes for consumers worth Rs 1 crore, Rs 50 lakh and Rs 25 lakh. For merchants too there would be three mega prizes worth Rs 50 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 12 lakh. It will be declared in the 100th Mega draw.

An NPCI report said Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Karnataka had emerged as the top five states /Union Territories with the maximum number of winners, while salaried professionals, students, businessmen, housewives and people working in the agriculture sector were the top winners.

Most of the winners were in the age group of 21 to 30 years, which suggests that the adoption of digital transaction is more among youngsters.

The two schemes are - Lucky Grahak Yojna (LGY) and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojna (DVY). They were launched on December 25, 2016 and will remain open till April 14, 2017. The schemes are aimed at incentivising both consumers and merchants to promote digital payments.There are 15,000 daily winners qualifying for total prize money of Rs. 1.5 crore. In additional to this there are over 14,000 weekly winners qualifying for total prize money of over Rs 8.3 crore every week, an NPCI release added.

Customers and merchants using RuPay Cards, BHIM / UPI (Bharat Interface for Money / Unified Payments Interface), USSD-based *99# service and Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service (AePS) are eligible to win daily and weekly lucky draw prizes, it added.

NPCI is working with the government to organise Digi Dhan Melas at 100 locations till April 14, 2017, by demonstrating the above mentioned products to promote digital payments. This will help inculcate digital payments as a habit amongst the masses.

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