Under an RBI fund, lakhs of physical and digital payment devices have been set up across cities

Almost 2.4 lakh physical devices like point of sale (PoS), mobile point of sale (mPoS) and general packet radio service (GPRS) had been set up in smaller towns under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIFD) till September 30, 2021.

According to data released by Reserve Bank of India (RBI), 2,45,942 physical devices had been installed in tier-3 to tier-6 centres as well as in north-eastern states.

RBI had operationalised PIFD on January 1, 2021, which subsidises deployment of PoS infrastructure – both physical as well as digital modes – in the abovementioned centres.

Beneficiaries of the Centre's street vendors' scheme or PM SVANidhi scheme from tier-1 and tier-2 centres have also been brought under PIFD's ambit since August 26, 2021.

In addition to physical devices, more than 55 lakh or 55,36,678 digital devices like inter-operable QR code-based payments like UPI QR and Bharat QR have been installed in tier-3,4,5 and 6 centres as well as north-eastern states.

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Contribution to the PIDF is made by the RBI, authorised card networks and card issuing banks. Total contribution from all these contributors currently stands at Rs 614 crore towards PIDF.

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.

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