India’s Digital Public Infrastructure goes global, says minister

New Delhi, July 27: India’s unique Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which has transformed millions of lives, is now being replicated in several countries, the Centre has informed. Aadhaar, which is the world’s largest digital identity programme that provides biometric and demographic-based unique digital identity, has generated 138.04 crore IDs to date.

More than 30 crore users have been facilitated and 675 crore issued documents made available by DigiLocker, according to Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Electronic and IT. The minister said in the Rajya Sabha that more than 1,388 crore financial transactions were processed through unified payments interface (UPI) in June alone.

Moreover, India has signed MoUs on cooperation in the field of sharing successful digital solutions implemented at population scale with 10 countries. These are Armenia, Sierra Leone, Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Kenya, Cuba and Colombia. DPI has been developed across various domains, aimed at enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and inclusivity.

“India Stack Global has been developed and rolled out with the aim to share the success of Indian DPIs with the global community and to facilitate replication in friendly countries,” informed the minister. Under the Indian Presidency of G20 in 2023, Global DPI Repository (GDPIR) portal was designed, developed and rolled out.

Meanwhile, an RBI report on Friday stated that digital payments in the country have registered a 12.6 per cent increase year-on-year with the RBI's Digital Payments Index (RBI-DPI). It rose to 445.5 at the end of March 2024 compared to 418.77 in September 2023 and 395.57 in March 2023, informed the Central Bank.