The RBI on Friday prolonged the Funds Infrastructure Growth Fund (PIDF) Scheme by two years until December 2025, and likewise widened the scope to offer subsidy by together with sound field devices and Aadhaar-enabled biometric units.
The corpus of PIDF stands at Rs 1,026.37 crore as on November 30, 2023.
The PIDF scheme was operationalised by the Reserve Financial institution in January 2021 for 3 years.
The target of the scheme was to encourage deployment of fee acceptance infrastructure akin to bodily Level of Sale (PoS) terminals, Fast Response (QR) codes, in tier-3 to tier-6 centres, North Jap states and Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
In an announcement, the central financial institution stated it has now determined to increase the PIDF scheme by an additional interval of two years — as much as December 31, 2025.
To widen the scope of beneficiaries, individuals eligible below the PM Vishwakarma Scheme in all centres have been included as retailers below the PIDF scheme.
With a purpose to promote acceptance infrastructure, sound field units and Aadhaar-enabled biometric units at the moment are eligible for declare of subsidy below the PIDF scheme.
RBI additionally stated that subsidies for particular focus areas — North Jap states and UTs of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, have been made uniform at 90 per cent of the price of the gadget.
The variety of fee acceptance units deployed below the PIDF scheme at end-November, 2023, stood at 8,27,901 (bodily units) and a pair of,71,95,902 (digital units).
Bodily units embody PoS, mPoS (cell PoS), GPRS (Basic Packet Radio Service), and PSTN (Public Switched Phone Community).
Inter-operable QR code-based funds akin to UPI QR, and Bharat QR are digital units
