UPSC 2026 › Indian Economy › Digital Payments & Financial Inclusion

Question 1

Which one of the following correctly represents the three key sub-indices of the Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ?

Accepted Answer

(c) Access, Usage, and Quality

Answer

(a) Credit access, Insurance depth, and Pension coverage

Answer

(b) Banking access, GDP contribution, and Financial literacy

Answer

(d) Access, Affordability, and Transparency

Question 2

Which one of the following best describes the key objective of India’s ‘Open Network for Digital Commerce’ (ONDC) initiative ?

Accepted Answer

(c) To break the dominance of large e-commerce platforms by enabling interoperability across networks

Answer

(a) To allow government control over all digital commerce transactions

Answer

(b) To replace private e-commerce players

Answer

(d) To mandate UPI-based payments for all online transactions

Question 3

Which one of the following statements about Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Central Bank Digital Currency (Digital Rupee) is not correct ?

Accepted Answer

(d) In both the cases (UPI and Digital Rupee), the liability lies with the users and their respective banks.

Answer

(a) UPI is a real-time payment system but Digital Rupee is akin to sovereign paper currency.

Answer

(b) In case of UPI, settlement for end users happens instantly as the money gets immediately debited or credited but in case of Digital Rupee, there is no settlement as the wallet balance gets transferred to another wallet.

Answer

(c) UPI transactions are recorded by banks and reflected in bank statements but in case of Digital Rupee, no data is captured in bank statements as transactions are from one wallet to another.