Digital financial inclusion CSEET

NITI Aayog and Mastercard released a report titled 'Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’

Dr Rajiv Kumar, NITI Aayog, Vice Chairman, while releasing the report reiterated that role of technology is transformational, providing greater and viable access to financial services. This is necessitated as the consumers are shifting from cash to cards, wallets, apps and UPI.

Mr Amitab Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, also emphasised that the role of technology in the growth of economy in the future. As India is emerging as the hub for digital financial services globally, digital solutions are growing in fast phase.

Nutshell

The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.

Key recommendations in the report include:

1. Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.

2. Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.

3. Building information sharing systems,including a 'fraud repository and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.

4. Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a 'phygital (physical +digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes. Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.