Over 11.8 mn payment devices deployed across country till April : RBI data

More than 4.11 lakh PoS, mobile PoS and other physical devices were deployed across the country under the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) scheme as on April 30, 2022, the RBI said on Thursday.

Besides, 1,14,05,116 digital devices, including inter-operable QR code-based payments such as UPI QR, Bharat QR, were deployed under the scheme.

The PIDF scheme, operationalised by the Reserve Bank from January 2021, subsidises deployment of Points of Sale (PoS) infrastructure (physical and digital modes) in tier-3 to tier-6 centres and northeastern states of the country.

From August 26, 2021, beneficiaries of PM Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi Scheme) in tier-1 and tier-2 centres were also covered.

The contribution to PIDF is made by the Reserve Bank, authorised card networks and card issuing banks; the corpus currently stands at Rs 811.4 crore, the RBI said.

Acquiring institutions (banks and non-banks), registered under the PIDF scheme, commit region-wise deployment targets, submit deployment statistics and claim subsidy for devices which fulfil the prescribed criteria.

On Wednesday, the RBI announced that to give further impetus to deployment of payment acceptance touchpoints, the PIDF scheme is being modified by enhancing the subsidy amount and simplifying the subsidy claim process.

This will further accelerate the deployment of payment acceptance touchpoints across the country, with special focus on rural areas.

All eligible installations since the inception of the scheme may prefer claims under the revised scheme, the central bank had said.