In yet another desperate move to promote digital payments, the government has now announced daily lucky draw for customers and merchants. This move is also seen as an attempt to pacify and lure citizens who have been waiting in long ATM queues to get cash.

Announcing the scheme on Thursday, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said the schemes will begin on December 25 as a Christmas gift to the nation. 

  • Lucky Grahak Yojana: There will be a random draw on all consumer transactions between Rs 50 and Rs 3000 for a daily, weekly and mega prize. The daily prize is for Rs 1,000, and weekly draw is for Rs 1 lakh.
  • Digi Dhan Vyaapari Yojana: All merchant transactions from Rs 50 to Rs 3,000 will be part of draw for a daily prize of Rs 1,000 and a weekly prize of Rs 50 lakh.
  • There also will be a Mega award on April 14, 2017 with cash prize of 1 crore, 50 lakh and 25 lakh for consumers for all transactions between November 8 and April 13. For merchants the prize money under the mega draw stands at Rs 50 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 5 lakh.

What is covered and what’s not? 

All transactions made via RuPay, (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) USSD, Unified payment interface (UPI) and Aadhar-enabled payment systems will be covered under the program.

These schemes will not cover transactions made through private credit cards and e-wallets. Also transactions above Rs 3000 and below Rs 50 will not be covered.

The government has allocated Rs 340 crore for the scheme and asked the National Payment corporation of India to conduct the lucky draws.