The Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Rs 2,600-crore scheme to promote RuPay debit cards and the BHIM-UPI payment app. Under the scheme, banks will be provided financial incentives for promoting Point of Sale (PoS) and e-commerce transactions using RuPay and BHIM-UPI in the current financial year.

The Union cabinet agreed on the scheme at its meeting on Wednesday that was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The scheme aims to promote digital payments among the poor. In December alone, UPI achieved a record of 782.9 crore digital payment transactions with a value of Rs 12.82 lakh crore.

The total digital payments transactions have registered a year-on-year growth of 59 per cent, rising from 5,554 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 8,840 crore in FY2021-22. BHIM-UPI transactions have registered a year-on-year growth of 106 per cent, rising from 2,233 crore in FY2020-21 to 4,597 crore in FY2021-22.

In the last budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the government’s intent to continue the financial support for digital payments with a focus on promoting the use of payment platforms that are economical and user-friendly.

The Cabinet on Wednesday also decided to establish three new national-level multi-state cooperative societies to promote organic products, seeds and exports.

UPI abroad The NPCI has permitted non-residents from 10 countries, including the US, Canada and the UAE, to digitally transfer funds using the UPI platform from NRE/NRO accounts.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in a circular dated January 10 has asked the UPI participants to put in place a funds transfer mechanism by April 30 under which non-residents having NRE/NRO accounts will be allowed to transfer funds using their international mobile numbers. To start with, this facility will be available to non-residents in 10 countries — Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the United Kingdom.