As a part of Digital Payments Awareness Week (DPAW) 2023, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das launched a mission — “Har Payment Digital” – with the aim of making every citizen in the country a user of digital payments.
This comes in the light of rising popularity of digital payments during the past few years. Despite the popularity and adoption, there is still a bracket which does not use digital payments for day-to-day transactions.
The main theme of the Har Payment Digital is “Adopt digital payments and Teach others also”.
The Har Payment Digital(HPD) mission:
With a Vision 2025, which has its theme as “E-Payments for Everyone, Everywhere and Everytime”, the central bank will launch “Har Payment Digital” (HPD) mission that would run till the period of Vision 2025.
A multimodal campaign covering print, television, radio and social media during the week around the theme — “Adopt digital payments and Teach others also” shall be carried out by RBI in collaboration with the banks and other stakeholders of payment systems.
The central bank said that the users of digital payments, through this campaign, shall be encouraged to teach non-users about the ease, safety and convenience of digital payments to fulfil the mission of every citizen a digital payments user.
A survey was conducted by RBI with 90,000 respondents and following were the findings:
1. 42 percent use digital payments
2. 35 percent are aware but have not used
3. 23 percent are not aware of digital payments
Why is there a Need of Digital Payments Awareness?
Given the silver linings of the digital payments, there is a need to create awareness about this and increase its adoption and usage.
Hence, the RBI has been observing a targeted campaign – DPAW — every year as part of the continuous efforts towards increasing financial awareness.
RBI has planned many different campaigns which will be undertaken to deepen the reach of digital payments in the country.
“Jan Bhagidari” or mass scale people involvement programmes shall be conducted by the central bank in order to enhance the awareness on a large scale about the mission and the theme of the campaign and to encourage adoption of digital payments in the process.
75 villages across the country shall be adopted by payment system operators for converting them into digital payment enabled villages.
These villages are not the ones covered in the Digital Banking Units (DBUs); Expanding and Deepening of Digital Payments Ecosystem (EDDPE); and the Aspirational Districts Programme.
Also in order to propagate the campaign theme message “Digital Payment Apnao, Auron ko Bhi Sikhao”, the central bank is planning to partner with appropriate agencies to reach out to villages across the country by sharing videos and teaching villagers about ease, safety, convenience and usage of digital payments.
