May 23, 2018
Aadhaar, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Payments Banks and pushing financial inclusion is high on government’s agenda. Use of technology by payments industry and banks is also being promoted for increased efficiency and enhanced productivity. To highlight some such trends and challenges faced by the payments industry, panel discussions were organized at the 7th Edition of VCCircle Payments Summit held in Mumbai on May 23, 2018.
One of these sessions on ‘Meeting the payments need of Bharat – Need for Financial Inclusion and Innovation’. During the discussion, Mr. Krishnan Dharmarajan, ED, CDFI said, “To create unique scalable digital payment models for those living in 600k+ villages of India, we must look at building technology of relevance.” This would enable Digital Transformation and Financial Inclusion. He added that banking products with simplified and user friendly interface will help in bridging the rural-urban gap in digital transactions and digital payments.
Talking about the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), he added, “While enabling creation of a bank account for every household and allowing people to come closer to financial institutions is just one step towards Financial Inclusion; to strike a visible change, decision makers need to think of ways to ensure continuous engagement with the banks so that the account is operational. Leveraging the potential of technology can help in empowering the non-digital natives and reducing the digital divide.”
Other speakers spoke about various initiatives on how government's policies/initiatives such as UPI, Aadhaar, eKYC, demonetization, digitization, etc are helping achieve government’s inclusion agenda to serve the under-served sections of the society.