Digital payments have significantly increased in recent years, as a result of coordinated efforts of the Government with all stakeholders. This was stated by Union Minister of State for Finance Dr. Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

The Minister stated that the total digital payment transactions volume increased from 2,071 crore in FY 2017-18 to 13,462 crore in FY 2022-23 at a CAGR of 45% and crossed 10,998 crore during current financial year till 27.11.2023. The details of the progress made in the number of digital payment transactions during the last three years and current year are as below:

 

Financial Year	Target (in crore)	Achievement (in crore)	Value (in ₹ lakh crore)
2020-21	5,500	5,554	3,000
2021-22	6,000	8,839	3,021
2022-23	13,233	13,462	3,355
2023-24   (till 27th Nov’23)	18,000	10,998	2,290

Source: Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) & DIGIDHAN Portal

 

The initiatives undertaken by the Government to promote digital transactions include, inter alia;

 

1. incentive scheme for promotion of RuPay Debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (P2M)
2. advisories by Government of India to various stakeholders to improve payment acceptance infrastructure
3. allocation and monitoring year-wise digital payment transaction & Merchant acquisition targets to the Public and Private Sector Banks
4. Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan (PMGDISHA) to augment digital literacy in rural India, and
5. other promotion activities conducted with digital payment stakeholders and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).

In addition, the Minister stated, RBI is also promoting digital literacy by holding financial literacy camps, sending financial awareness messages and carrying out multi-channel public awareness media campaigns. The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishes Red Book Statistics which can be accessed at: Digital payments make gains but cash remains (bis.org). Further, benchmarking exercise was undertaken by RBI for the year 2022 with progress measured. The exercise validated India’s progress in Payments Ecosystem with India categorised as leader or strong in respect of 25 out of 40 indicators. BENCHMARKING INDIA’s PAYMENT SYSTEMS (rbi.org.in).

On the question of prevention of cyber crimes, the Minister stated that the Ministry of Home Affairs has informed that ‘Police’ and ‘public order’ are State subjects as per the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India. States/UTs are primarily responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes including cyber frauds through their LEAs. The Central Government supplements the efforts of State Governments through advisories and financial assistance under various schemes for capacity building, the Minister stated.

In order to strengthen the mechanism to deal with cybercrimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner, the Minister stated that the Central Government has taken steps for spreading awareness about cybercrime; issuance of alerts /advisories; capacity building/trainings of LEAs/Prosecutors/Judicial Officers; improving cyber forensic facilities etc. The Government has established the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to provide a framework and ecosystem for LEAs to deal with cybercrimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner. The Government has also launched the National Cyber Reporting Portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in) to enable the public to report all types of cybercrimes, with special focus on cybercrimes against women and children.

Further, the Minister stated that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is also working in close coordination with service providers, regulators and LEAs to track and disable phishing websites and facilitate investigation of fraudulent activities; issues alerts and advisories; and operates an automated cyber threat exchange platform for proactively collecting, analysing and sharing tailored alerts.

Further, RBI had issued instructions to banks regarding limiting the customer liabilities in unauthorized/ fraudulent electronic transactions, vide circulars dated July 6, 2017 and December 14, 2017 for Commercial banks and Cooperative banks respectively, wherein, the criteria for determining the limited liability of the customer in various types of digital transactions are outlined, the Minister stated.

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NB/VM/KMN

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