The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) says, digital transactions worth Rs 7,422 crore were made in the current fiscal (FY22), as of February 28. A 33 percent jump from the whole of FY21, when digital transactions worth Rs 5,554 crore were done.

According to the Ministry, digital payment transactions have been steadily increasing over the past few years, as a part of Government of India’s strategy to digitize the financial sector and economy.

MeitY also touched upon the growth of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), calling it the preferred payment mode of citizens. It said UPI has clocked 452.75 crore transactions worth Rs 8.27 lakh crore in FY22 (as of February 28).

Reports suggest that, MeitY has undertaken several initiatives to create awareness of digital payments in remote parts of the country to boost India’s digital economy.

“MeitY has undertaken ‘Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan’ (PMGDISHA) to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering six crore rural households (one person per household) by March 31, 2023. MeitY advised all banks and payment service providers to undertake awareness campaigns for promotion of secure payment practices and generate information security awareness,” the ministry adds.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken various steps to enhance security of digital transactions and reduce fraud.

In the last few months, RBI has implemented several rules to make online transactions more secure. Last September, it implemented an additional factor of authentication (AFA) for all recurring credit or debit card payments. It was followed by a mandate on card-on-file-tokenisation that requires all payment companies to replace card details with an alternative code called a token.