Digital transactions in India jumped 19 times in last 7 yrs: PM Modi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday lauded the use of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) across the country and said the digital transactions in India has jumped 19 times in the last seven years.

"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," the Prime Minister said while speaking at the launch of two customer-centric initiatives of RBI.

PM Modi said, "Till 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.

The Prime Minister also lauded the role of cooperative banks in strengthening the banking sector.

"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," he said.

Earlier today, PM Modi launched two innovative customer-centric initiatives of the Reserve Bank of India.

The RBI Retail Direct Scheme is aimed at enhancing 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. Investors will be able to easily open and maintain their government securities account online with the RBI, free of cost.

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

There will be a single point of reference for customers to file their complaints, submit the documents, track status and provide feedback. A multi-lingual toll-free number will provide all relevant information on grievance redress and assistance for filing complaints