This came in response to a tweet outlining how Germany had been incapable of transferring money to its citizens because matching bank and tax IDs takes 18 months.
In comparison, more than ₹24.8 lakh crore has been transferred through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode in India since 2013, ₹6.3 lakh crore in FY 2021-22 alone. On an average, more than ₹90 lakh DBT payments were processed daily (in FY 2021-22).
As far as digital payments are concerned, more than 8,840 crore digital payment transactions were done during 2021-22 and nearly 3,300 crore in FY 2022-23 (upto July). On an average, 28.4 crore digital transactions were done in a day.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing and merchant payments into one hood.
It also caters to the peer-to-peer collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.
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Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar told ET that India is leading the world in digital payments and is pre-eminent in the use of technology to improve citizens’ lives and governance.
The India Stack and other various digital government solutions are now the envy of other nations, he said. “India leads digital and digital leads India,” he remarked.
Pramod Varma, who is counted as one of the architects of Aadhaar and UPI, tweeted that the Indian direct cash transfer system was very advanced, interoperable across all banks, fully digital, low cost, and covers more than 650 million people.
It is powered by digital identity, unified national payment switch with open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and a large network of cash-in/out touch points, he said.
On Thursday, Christian Odendahl, the European Economics Editor of The Economist, tweeted, “Absolutely remarkable. The German state is incapable of transferring money to its citizens because … matching bank and tax IDs takes 18 months, and the admin can only handle 100k transfers a day anyway. Merkel’s devastating legacy, No. 2314.”
It was retweeted more than 1,300 times and liked more than 7,600 times.
Among those who responded to the tweet were Chandrasekhar, who tweeted, “And, meanwhile, India uses technology to drive digital payments and speedy delivery of government subsidies/benefits to all citizens.”
Political advisor Siddhant Jain tweeted, “Proud of India’s payment network UPI. Serves four billion transactions a month valued at $100 billion! India has more real time payments than the USA, China & UK combined.”
Arvind Gupta, founder member of iSPIRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round Table), a think tank for the Indian software products industry, told ET, “The World Bank has understood and recognised the importance of India’s digital infrastructure and digital public goods which includes identity payments, and the eKYC framework which helped us not only open 460 million bank accounts but also enable direct benefit transfer to these bank accounts.”
He pointed out that India was part of the Digital Public Goods Alliance and Germany’s giz, a developmental institution, and its GovStack, to promote India’s digital public goods.
“We are not only contributing to global common good; we are actively sharing our knowledge and learning, and will be happy to do that through National Payments Corporation of India or foreign diplomatic missions,” he added.
Bengaluru-based International Institute of Information Technology has developed an open-source identity platform called MOSIP which is leading to the financial inclusion of millions of people across the world as various countries have based their national identity programmes on MOSIP.
Among digital public goods that India has provided to the world is also the CoWIN dashboard that aided in the Covid-19 vaccination of millions of Indians.
