The Government of India seeks to promote digital payment methods to encourage consumers and merchants to increasingly shift to these payment modes. To take this imitative forward, Lucky Grahak Yojana for Consumers and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana for Merchants, will be launched on 25th December 2016 at Vigyan Bhavan.

The schemes will be launched with the first draw by Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad and Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley.

The schemes are aimed at encouraging people to move towards significantly higher usage of digital transactions through the offer of incentives.

Winners will be selected on a daily and weekly basis under the Lucky Grahak Yojana and weekly basis under the Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana respectively, leading up to 14th April 2017, when the schemes will culminate with a mega draw.

The draws for these events will be taken out in 100 different cities around the country, in a ceremony accompanied by a digital payments adoption fair called DigiDhan Mela. As part of the mela, to encourage adoption of digital payments by local residents, booths and help centers will be set up by banks and other stakeholders, where citizens can get apps downloaded and learn how to do digital transactions.

The schemes will be implemented by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Only those transactions that take place through RuPay Cards, USSD, UPI and AEPS are eligible for these schemes.

According to NITI Aayog Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant, “On April 14, there would be mega awards worth Rs 1 crore, Rs 50 lakh and Rs 25 lakh, respectively for consumers and Rs 50 Lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 5 lakh for merchants.”