Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), a mobile app pushed by the government to make digital payments a mass movement in India, has seen over 17 million installs (downloads), a world record, Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, has said.

The Centre will also soon roll out a cash-back scheme to give a further boost to the use of BHIM, Kant told presspersons here on Tuesday.

"We will ensure that BHIM becomes the default option for digital payments. The main challenge for us is to keep the momentum for digital payments going and we will take all steps to push digital transactions," Kant said.

Launched in end-December by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BHIM App has seen one update that made the 'Pay to Aadhaar’ number a new payment option. Seven new languages — Odia, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Gujarati -- have also been introduced as part of the update. This is besides English and Hindi on which BHIM was initially launched on the Android platform. BHIM is now also available on the iOS platform.

INCENTIVE SCHEMES

Sharing the details of NITI Aayog's two incentive schemes -- Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana -- to promote digital payments, Kant said the public response has been quite encouraging for both these schemes.

Nearly 10 lakh consumers and merchants have been disbursed over Rs 153.5 crore as reward money till February 20 under these two schemes. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has been executing these two schemes.

Kant said the initiative to make digital payments a mass movement in India through the two schemes has made headway across the country with more and more people adopting digital transactions.

Among the 9.8 lakh winners, more than 9.2 lakh were consumers and 56,000 were merchants. As many as 120 consumers have won Rs 50,000 prize each. Kant said Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi have emerged as the top five states/union territories with maximum number of winners.

While a majority of the winners are in the age group of 21 to 30, a significant number are above 60 years of age. Winners belonged to diverse socio-economic backgrounds --from farmers, merchants, small entrepreneurs, professionals, housewives, students to retired persons, Kant added.

srivats.kr@thehindu.co.in

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