SME Times News Bureau | 09 Sep, 2021
Pilot
run of the 'special drive for Digital onboarding of street vendors
under PM SVANidhi scheme' was launched today jointly by Ajay Prakash
Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information
Technology(MeitY) and Shri DurgaShanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of
Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in a virtual event.
Senior officers
from MeitY and MoHUA also attended the event virtually. The drive
launched today is in line with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s
vision of “SabkaSaathSabkaVikas”.
The
special drive aims to accelerate on-boarding of street vendors on the
UPI QR code and handhold them to start accepting/making digital payment
transactions. Five major aggregators including Paytm, Phone Pe, Bharat
Pe, Mswipe and Aceware have agreed to participate in 45 days special
drive for digitally onboarding the street vendors with BHIM-UPI QR code
on pro-bono basis.
The
drive will cover 223 cities across the country with around 8,68,184
street vendors to be onboarded under various urban local bodies.
Digital
Payment Aggregators will educate the street vendors about the benefits
of digital payments such as convenience, increased operational
efficiency, seamless transfer of funds, cost saving, transparency and
security.
They will also hand hold the street vendors by performing
penny drop transaction and any further support that is required to
accept/ pay digitally.
Digital
footprints including digital payment transactions and loan repayment
data under the scheme would help in credit profiling of street vendors.This will enable inclusion of street vendors in the formal credit
ecosystem, and help in driving financial inclusion of unorganized
sector.
This
will enable inclusion of Street Vendors in the formal credit ecosystem,
and help in driving financial inclusion of the unorganized sector.
In
recent years, a significant rise in use of digital payments has been
observed.Contactless digital payment modes including BHIM UPI, Rupay
contactless etc, has significant role to facilitate social distancing,
for prevention of Covid-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic has catazalyzed
behavioural changes in citizens for adoption of digital payments, as
reflected in the tremendous growth in BHIM UPI transactions from 99.95 crore in April 2020 to 355.55
crore in August-2021. During the coronavirus crisis, digital payments,
particularly BHIM UPI has played a significant role in keeping economy
running by supporting commerce and business.