What is 'Main Bhi Digital 3.0’? How Street Vendors Can Benefit?

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology has launched a pilot drive 'Main Bhi Digital 3.0' - A special Campaign for Digital Onboarding and Training for street vendors under PM SVANidhi scheme across 223 cities in the country.

The BharatPe, Mswipe, PhonePe, Paytm, Aceware are participating in this drive to issue UPI IDs, QR code and provide digital training. Digital Payment Aggregators will handhold the street vendors to bring about enhanced adoption of digital transactions and behaviour change. To promote digital transactions instruction has been issued to the Lending Institutions (LIs) to handover a durable QR Code and train the beneficiaries for conducting digital receipt and payment transactions within a week of disbursement.

So far, 45.5 lakh applications have been received. Out of these, 27.2 lakh loans have been sanctioned and 24.6 lakh loans have been disbursed. The amount disbursed so far is Rs 2,444 Ccrores. More than 70,448 street vendors have repaid their first loan tranche. Out of 22.41 lakh digitally on-boarded street vendors, 7.24 lakh street vendors are digitally active and have recorded 5.92 Cr number of digital transactions.

PM Street Vendor's AtmaNirbhar Nidhi was launched on June 1, 2020 as a Central Sector Scheme. The scheme facilitates affordable working capital loan of up to ₹10,000 with an interest subsidy @7% on regular repayment.

The street vendors are not required to pay any collateral for the loan. The scheme provides Graded Guarantee Cover, to Lending Institutions, on a portfolio basis. The scheme targets to cover 50 lakh street vendors, who had been vending on or before March 24, 2020. The street vendors also stand a chance to avail a loan of Rs 20,000 and Rs 50,000 in the second and third tranches respectively on timely repayment of the loan. To encourage digital transaction a cash back up to Rs 1,200 on digital transactions at Rs 100 per month is provided to the street vendors under the scheme. An Integrated IT Platform has been developed to provide end-to-end solution for the paper less loan processing. SIDBI has been appointed as the implementation agency for scheme administration.