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Digital India aimed at creating knowledge-based society: Speaker tells MPs
NEW DELHI: Observing that the digital age is going to dominate the future, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has said the Digital India Programme is a giant leap in the endeavour to create a digitally empowered and knowledge-based society.
Inaugurating an Orientation Programme on ‘Digital India Implementation’ for Members of Parliament in Parliament Library Building yesterday, she emphasized that many may not be well acquainted with Digital India as it was a relatively new phenomenon but it was imperative that Members as people’s representatives gain the right knowledge through this familiarization programme for the benefit of people at large.
Mahajan further observed that Digital India campaign launched in July 2015 seeks to ensure that the Government services are made available to people effectively by improving online infrastructure, by increasing internet connectivity and by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology.
She hoped that the domain experts in the field would focus on the key components of Digital India Framework, MyGov – Creating Participatory Digital Democracy and Digital Village – connecting Rural India to Digital Services for the Members.
Mahajan stressed that our Parliament is taking pro-active measures in adopting and applying information technology in its functioning. She said that an e-Portal for Lok Sabha Members was launched on 17 July 2016 to help the Members to discharge their parliamentary works more efficiently. It will be instrumental in minimizing the use of paper and help to convert Lok Sabha into a paperless institution in future, she added.
Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad; Minister of State of P P Chaudhary; Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training (BPST) Honorary Advisor Raghunandan Sharma and Lok Sabha Secretary-General Anoop Mishra were also present at the inaugural function. The Programme was organized by BPST, Lok Sabha Secretariat in collaboration with the National Institute for Smart Government.
eNews
PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
