As on May 31, 2025, around 4.77 crore digital touch points have been deployed through PIDF
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ALLEN EGENUSE J
Indian digital payment landscape witnessed over 65,000 crore transactions amounting to more than ₹12,000 lakh crore in the past six financial years, Parliament was informed on Monday.
The government has been closely working with different stakeholders, including the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), fintechs, banks and state governments, to increase the adoption rates of digital payments in the country including in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
RBI has set up a Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) in 2021 to encourage deployment of digital payments acceptance infrastructure in tier-3 to 6 cities, North-Eastern States and Jammu & Kashmir, he said.
As on May 31, 2025, around 4.77 crore digital touch points have been deployed through PIDF, he said.
Replying to another question, Chaudhary said, the New Digital Credit Assessment Model for MSMEs was announced in the Union Budget 2024-25.
“The model envisioned that the public sector banks (PSBs) will build their in-house capability to assess MSMEs for credit, instead of relying on external assessment. PSBs would develop a new credit assessment model, based on the scoring of digital footprints of MSMEs in the economy,” he said.
Subsequently, the Union finance minister had launched the New Credit Assessment Model for MSMEs on March 6, 2025.
The model leverages the digitally fetched and verifiable data and devises automated journeys for MSME loan appraisal using objective decisioning for all loan applications and model-based limit assessment for both Existing to Bank (ETB) as well as New to Bank (NTB) MSME borrowers, he said.
The digital footprints used by the model may include Pan authentication using NSDL, mobile and email verification using OTP, Application Programming Interface (API), fetching of GST data through service providers, bank statement analysis using account aggregator, ITR upload and verification, API-enabled commercial and consumer bureau fetch and due diligence using Credit Information Companies (CICs), fraud checks, through APIs, among others, he said.
The model is live with all banks with different loan amount threshold, he said, adding, a total of 98,995 MSME loan applications have been sanctioned by the PSBs under New Credit Assessment Model between April 1 and July 15, 2025.
In reply to another question, he said, India’s foreign exchange reserves continue to be at comfortable levels, standing at USD 668.3 billion as of March 2025, providing an import cover of about 11 months and covering 90.8 per cent of external debt outstanding.
The ratio of short-term debt (original maturity) to reserves stood at 20.1 per cent, he said, adding, the latest position of forex reserves is USD 696.7 billion as of July 11, 2025.
Further, he said, various measures have been taken by the RBI to enhance foreign exchange inflows into the country by removing short-term investment and concentration limits for FPIs in corporate debt, introducing Special Non-Resident Rupee accounts for non-residents with business interest in India to facilitate cross-border transactions; raising interest rate ceiling on FCNR(B) deposits till March 2025 to incentivise deposits etc.
The foreign exchange reserves are invested with the objective of safety, liquidity, and returns and are invested in approved sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed investments only, he said.
Replying to another question, Chaudhary said Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) has submitted a proposal to declare all Saturdays as banking holiday.
“In regard to the Saturdays being public holiday, subsequent to 10th Bipartite settlement/7th Joint note signed between IBA and Workmen Unions/Officer Associations, Government, in exercise of powers conferred by section 25 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, vide notification dated August 28, 2025, had declared the second and the fourth Saturdays of every month as public holiday for banks in India,” he said.
He further said that PSBs are board governed commercial entities and the requirement of manpower in each PSB is determined by the respective PSB keeping in view various factors.
Appointment of officers and staff is done accordingly by the PSBs and it varies from year to year based on their requirements, he said.
As per inputs received from PSBs, he said as on March 31, 2025, 96 per cent staff are in position against their business requirement.
The small proportion of gap is attributable to attrition on account of superannuation and other usual factors including unplanned exits, he added.
Published on July 28, 2025
