The government has declared a prize money worth ₹60.90 crore for 3.81 lakh consumers and 21,000 merchants at 24 Digi-DhanMelas across the country.
According to a statement from NITI Aayog, “Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka have emerged as the top five States with maximum number of winners. Active participation has been seen among men and women while most of the winners were in the age group of 21-30 years.”
These schemes aimed at incentivising the consumers and the merchants to promote digital payments were launched on December 25, 2016 and will remain open till April 14, 2017.
Under the scheme, 15,000 daily winners vie for total prize money of ₹1.5 crore at the rate of ₹1,000 per person. Further, 14,000 winners qualify for weekly draws with the total prize money of over ₹8.3 crore per week.
Customers and merchants using RuPay Card, BHIM, UPI (Bharat Interface for Money/Unified Payment Interface) USSD based *99# service and Aadhaar enabled Payment Service (AePS) are eligible for participating in the daily and weekly lucky draws.
A government statement noted that the lucky draws are being held at Digi-DhanMelas across the country. It also said 24 of the scheduled 100 melas have already been held and that the remaining will be held across the country to inculcate digital payment among the people.