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Cash ban boosts digital payment systems by up to 1,300% in 30 days

A day after demonetisation drive competed one month of its implementation, the government has come out with astonishing facts and figures to defend its move, which has actually “derailed” Indian economy. 

According to Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, the different digital payment systems have registered a tremendous increase in transactions ranging from 271 per cent to 1202 per cent.

The highest increase has been noticed in transactions done using unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), while lowest gain was registered by e-wallets. The number of transactions using USSD platform were just 97 when the demonetisation drive was announced, which rose to 1,263 transactions in day on December 7 registering am 1202 per cent increase in frequency of transactions. 

In terms of money-wise transactions, the USSD was used for 1 lakh transactions in a day on November 8 which rose to 14 lakh transactions in day on December 7, registering 1300 per cent increase. 

Similarly, only 3.85 lakh transactions in day were being made through RuPay cards on November 8, which rose to 16 lakh transactions per day by December 7, registering a gain of 316 per cent and in terms of money-wise transactions, people were spending 39.19 crore per day, which increased to 236 crore by registering a whopping 503 per cent increase during the period.

“Digital payments have increased in the range of 400 to 1,000 per cent since November 8. This figure does not include transactions done through Master and Visa cards,” Prasad said while inaugurating a new TV channel DigiShala and a website cashlessindia.gov.in to educate people about digital payments.

The minister said that transactions on e-wallets have increased from 17 lakh per day to 63 lakh per day and value of transactions has increased from Rs 52 crore to Rs 191 crore. The volume of transactions using UPI transactions is up from 3,721 per day to 48,000 per day and value Rs 1.93 crore to Rs 15 crore, he added.

“With digital transactions money will come into system, it will be accountable, generate tax and develop country’s economy. When money will come in to bank then government will be able to come up with better welfare schemes,” the minister said, while hailing the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as historic and taken for the interest of people.

Explaining about newly launched TV channel, Prasad said, “Its free-to-air channel which will be available on Doordarshan’s DTH platform. The Doorsdarshan platform is being used by over 2 crore people specially in rural India. Indian learn technology with passion and increased digital transactions reflect this. From this, it can be understood how fast digital transactions will grow if we educate people.” 

However, minister refused to comment on what necessitated the government to roll out a new TV channel, when there are other means of communication available such as free-to-air channels of Doorsdarshan, DD Kisan, etc. When asked what would be the expenses to run the channel and why not programmes to educate people about digital payments should be aired on DD Kisan, Prasad preferred to ignore the questions.
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