The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended the validity of the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) scheme to December 31, 2025.
The PIDF scheme, launched in January 2021, subsidises the deployment of digital payment acceptance infrastructure especially in Tier-3 and Tier-6 cities and North Eastern states. It was initially meant to last for three years.
The goal of the scheme is to add 30 lakh touchpoints (10 lakh physical and 20 lakh digital payment acceptance devices) every year. The devices that are eligible for subsidy under this scheme include point-of-sale (PoS) devices, QR code-based systems, etc.
The PIDF scheme is one of the many reasons why digital payments in the country have skyrocketed over the last few years.
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Along with the validity extension, the central bank said that the following devices will be eligible for subsidy under PIDF:
- Soundbox devices: These are physical devices that provide instant audio confirmation when a payment is made to the merchant. Paytm and Phonepe sell such soundboxes.
- Aadhaar-enabled biometric devices: These are certified biometric scanner devices facilitating Aadhaar authentication for acceptance of payment by merchants through BHIM Aadhaar Pay.
Additionally, all beneficiaries identified as part of the PM Vishwakarma Scheme are included as merchants for deployment under the PIDF scheme and are eligible to claim subsidies under the scheme for devices installed since September 17, 2023.
The corpus of PIDF stands at ₹1026 crores as of November 30, 2023.
RBI also shared status updates on the number of payment devices deployed under the PIDF scheme as of November 30, 2023:
- Physical devices: 8,27,901
- Digital devices: 2,71,95,902
Physical devices include point-of-sale (PoS) devices, mPoS (mobile PoS), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), etc. and digital devices include inter-operable QR code-based payments such as UPI QR, Bharat QR, etc.
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