Amitabh Kant hails India’s digital innovation

Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa of India, on Friday said that India’s initiatives in digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar, unique payment infrastructure, and direct benefit transfer a phenomenal story for the whole world. Speaking at India Today Conclave 2023, Kant said India’s strides in providing digital identity to every citizen, the opening of bank accounts in large numbers, data empowerment of citizens and fast payments have made its economy robust and stand out after the pandemic period.

“Our digital leap is different from the big tech model of the United States, like Google, Microsoft. Europe also focused on privacy but not on innovation like India. In India, we built up a digital identity for every Indian. From 2015 to 2018, we opened 500 million bank accounts. We seeded Aadhaar with mobile numbers. Indians started doing fast payments from their mobile. Today, India does 11X digital payments than the US and 4X from China. India is the only country where PhonePe can compete with Google Pay, Paytm competes with WhatsApp in the market. Here 40 apps compete with each other. For me the Indian model is the future,” Kant said on Friday.

Kant said India’s presentation at the G20 Sherpa meeting is all about technological transformation and digital public infrastructure that has been established in the country over the recent past.

“For the last four years, my mobile has been my virtual bank. India does 11 times more digital payments than the US and Europe do. It’s a huge story. Doing 2.5 billion vaccinations, totally paperless, cashless, during Covid-19 is a remarkable story,” Amitabh Kant, former CEO, NITI Aayog said.

He added: “G20 countries view India as a vibrant democracy. They view India as a country where a PM was democratically elected for a second time. Democracy is also about developmental works you have done,” Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa, Former CEO, NITI Aayog said.

The value of UPI transactions in February was Rs 12.35 lakh crore and the number of transactions was 750 crore.

In January, the platform had seen a record 803 crore transactions worth Rs 12.98 lakh crore. UPI transactions usually trend lower in February compared with other months, owing to the fewer days in the month.

So far in FY23, the network has processed around 7,502 crore transactions worth Rs 125 lakh crore. During 2022, the platform saw around 7,404 crore transactions worth Rs 126 lakh crore.

The Centre recently allowed UPI transactions for foreign nationals of G20 countries and for certain NRE(O) account holders that have international phone numbers. BusinessToday