PM Narendra Modi lauds India's shift to digital transactions

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been an advocate of digitization of the economy on Friday (November 12) hailed the practice of using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) by the people adding that the scale of digital transactions in India jumped 19 times in the last seven years. The prime minister made the statements at the launch of two customer-centric initiatives of RBI.

"India has become the world's leading country in terms of digital transactions in a very short span of time. In just seven years, digital transactions in India has jumped 19 times. Today our banking system is operational 24 hours, 7 days and 12 months anytime, anywhere in the country,"

Underscoring the development of banking and digital payments in India, PM Modi said, " 6-7 years ago, banking, pension, insurance, everything used to be like an 'exclusive club in India'. Common citizens of the country, poor families, farmers, small traders-businessmen, women, Dalits-deprived-backwards, all these facilities were far away for all of them."

The Prime Minister further pointed out that earlier, there were no bank branches, no staff, no internet, no awareness in the banking sector.

"The people who had the responsibility of taking these facilities to the poor also never paid any attention to it. Rather, various excuses were made for not changing. It was said that there is no bank branch, no staff, no internet, no awareness, no idea what were the arguments," the Prime Minister said.

PM Modi also applauded the role of cooperative banks in strengthening India’s economy by saying “to further strengthen the banking sector, cooperative banks were also brought under the purview of RBI. Due to this the governance of these banks is also improving and the trust in this system is getting stronger even among the lakhs of depositors who are there.”

Earlier today, PM Modi launched two innovative customer-centric initiatives of the Reserve Bank of India- the RBI Retail Direct Scheme and the Reserve Bank - Integrated Ombudsman Scheme.

Under the RBI Retail, Direct Scheme efforts have been made to enhance access to the government securities market for retail investors. It offers them a new avenue for directly investing in securities issued by the Government of India and the State Governments.

The Reserve Bank - Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, on the other hand, aims to improve the grievance redressal mechanism for resolving customer complaints against entities regulated by RBI. The scheme is based on 'One Nation-One Ombudsman' with one portal, one email and one address for the customers to lodge their complaints.

(With inputs from ANI)

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