Special drive for Digital onboarding of street vendors lauched

Newdelhi:9/9/21:Pilot run of the ‘special drive for Digital onboarding of street vendors under PM SVANidhischeme’was launched today jointly by Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology(MeitY) and Shri Durga Shanker 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 the onboarding 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 Acer have agreed to participate in 45 days special drive for digitally onboarding the street vendors with BHIM-UPI QR code on a 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 handhold the street vendors by performing penny drop transactions 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 the inclusion of street vendors in the formal credit ecosystem, and help in driving financial inclusion of unorganized sector.

This will enable the 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 the use of digital payments has been observed. Contactless digital payment modes including BHIM UPI, Rupay contactless, etc,  has a significant role to facilitate social distancing, for the prevention of Covid-19. The Covid-19 pandemic has catalyzed behavioral changes in citizens for the adoption of digital payments, as reflected in the tremendous growth in BHIM UPI transactions from  99.95 crores in April 2020 to  355.55 crore in August-2021.  During the coronavirus crisis, digital payments, particularly BHIM UPI have played a significant role in keeping the economy running by supporting commerce and business.