By Manish Patel,
Small retailers and kiranas were instrumental in growing the share of digital payments in India and in providing easy payment solutions to their customers since the onset of Covid-19.
The Budget provision of Rs 1,500 crore to incentivize digital modes of payments comes as a recognition of these very efforts and will go a long way in encouraging Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to switch to accepting digital payments.
The announcement by the Honourable Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has met the industry’s expectation of providing financial incentives that enable small businesses to adopt digital solutions.
As India’s largest POS acquirer and end-to-end digital enabler of SMEs, Mswipe sees this as a great boost for digital payments infrastructure as well as growth in share of small businesses in online commerce.
Further, the Budget allocation of Rs 15,700 crore to support the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), which is more than double of this year’s Budget estimate, is also a positive step.
Similarly, the proposed development of a world-class fintech hub at GIFT-IFSC is yet another effort in the direction of placing India as a leading innovation ecosystem on the global fintech map.”
(The author is Founder & CEO at Mswipe)