Digital Payment

The Smart Cities Mission was launched in June 2015 with an aim to develop 100 Smart Cities by 2020 to promote development of physical, institutional, social and economic infrastructure. Smart Cities make use of cutting-edge technology across areas and sectors to enhance ease of living for their citizens. One of the most important areas of transformation is the digital payments space. Promotion of digital payments has been accorded high priority by the Government of India to bring our country to reap their advantages for the overall economy. The mandate is to provide facilities for seamless digital payment to all citizens of India in a convenient, easy, affordable, quick and secured manner.

Digital payment is a way of payment in which both payer and payee use digital modes to send and receive money. It does not include cash, cheque or any other paper-based payment instrument.

The Smart Cities Digital Payments Awards 2018 ‘100 days Challenge in 100 Smart Cities’ is part of this endeavor of MoHUA. The objective of these awards is to guide, motivate, recognize and reward the Smart Cities for promoting digital payments and carrying out innovative payment initiatives. This will not only reward Smart Cities at the forefront of digital payments but also act as encouragement for other cities to follow suite and strengthen their digital payments infrastructure and create awareness through promotion of digital payments amongst all stakeholders and provide citizens with multiple options to make digital transactions.

The Digital India programme is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. We intend to create “Faceless, Paperless, Cashless ” processes in the cities of India that will profess the role of Digital India. The promotion of digital payments has been accorded the highest priority by the Government of India in order to bring each and every segment of our country under the formal fold of digital payment services. The Vision is to provide the facility of seamless digital payment to all citizens of India in a convenient, easy, affordable, quick and secure manner.

As per the sources, the target for fiscal 2017-18 was 25 billion transactions – this is from the ministry in a letter, where it is said that “MeitY in consultation with Department of Financial Services has now set a target of 2,374 cr digital transactions for banks for the FY 2018-19.”

The smart city mission of the Government of India seeks to address the issue of urbanization through the transformation of selected cities. Bhopal is one of those cities that have been selected and intent to create a sustainable city that can provide a good quality life to its citizens and enforcing digital payments. Bhopal has been amongst the 20 lighthouse cities with a vividly different approach which is driven by ‘Redevelopment’ rather than ‘Retrofitting.