NITI Aayog and Mastercard Release Report on financial inclusion "EMPOWER IAS"

 

About the report:

• NITI Aayog and Mastercard today released a report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’.
• The report identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.
• The report highlights key issues and opportunities, with inferences and recommendations on policy and capacity building across agriculture, small business (MSMEs), urban mobility and cybersecurity.
• This report looks at some key sectors and areas that need digital disruptions to bring financial services to everyone.

 

Key recommendations in the report include:

• Strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
• Digitizing registration and compliance processes and diversifying credit sources to enable growth opportunities for MSMEs.
• Building information sharing systems, including a ‘fraud repository’, and ensuring that online digital commerce platforms carry warnings to alert consumers to the risk of frauds.
• Enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for achieving better long-term digital outcomes.
• Digitizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector.
• To make city transit seamlessly accessible to all with minimal crowding and queues, leveraging existing smartphones andcontactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully open system such as that of the London ‘Tube’.