Over one crore rural citizens had been trained on digital payments through Common Service Centres (CSCs) under the 'Digi Dhan Abhyan', said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for electronics & information technology on Wednesday. More than three lakh merchants had started offering digital payment options to rural customers across various districts and blocks in rural India, he said.
Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh have recorded the highest number of enrolments with citizen enrolment crossing 15 lakh and 12.5 lakh respectively. Chhatisgarh and Uttar Pradesh have recorded highest number of merchant enrolments crossing 60,000 merchants each.
"The rapid pace at which rural citizens are adopting digital methods of payment demonstrates their support and enthusiasm to be a part of the digital transformation story of our country,” said Prasad.
Twelve villages in the country have become cashless with all the shopkeepers having at least one mode of digital payment. One member in every family is capable of doing transactions digitally in these villages.
National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology and My Gov (a citizen-centric platform initiated by Modi government) have signed an MoU with CAIT (Confederation of All India Trader) to train one crore merchants across 1,000 towns in India.
