PMJDY Marks 11 Years With 560 Million Accounts, ₹2.68 Trillion Deposits

(MENAFN- Live Mint) The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) has facilitated the opening of 560 million bank accounts with deposits amounting to ₹2.68 trillion over the last 11 years, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.

In her message marking 11 years of the financial inclusion initiative, she noted that PMJDY has been one of the major channels for delivering benefits under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), while also providing credit facilities, social security, and enhancing savings and investments.

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Apart from boosting the account and deposit base, Sitharaman said the programme has also promoted the adoption of digital transactions through the issuance of over 380 million free RuPay cards.

While the volume of digital transactions surged to 221.98 billion in 2024-25 from 23.38 billion in 2018-19, the total number of UPI transactions jumped to 185.87 billion from 5.35 billion during the same period. The total number of RuPay card transactions at points of sale and e-commerce sites has also gone up to 938.5 million from 670 million in 2017-18, said a finance ministry statement.

“It is noteworthy that under the PMJDY, 67% of the accounts are opened in rural or semi-urban areas, and 56% are opened by women, indicating how underprivileged individuals living in far-flung areas of the country have been brought into the formal financial sector,” Sitharaman said.

She said that PMJDY has been one of the major channels for delivering benefits under various schemes using Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), providing credit facilities, social security, and enhancing savings and investments.

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“Financial inclusion is a key driver of economic growth and development. Universal access to bank accounts enables the poor and marginalised to participate fully in the formal economy and benefit from its opportunities,” Sitharaman said.

The PMJDY, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 28 August 2014, ensures that every unbanked adult has access to a basic bank account, with zero balance requirements and no maintenance charges.

Each account comes with a free RuPay debit card, offering an accident insurance cover of ₹2 lakh, encouraging digital transactions and financial security. Account holders are also eligible for an overdraft facility of up to ₹10,000, providing a safety net during emergencies.

The Jan-Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity, with the PMJDY at its core, has also proven to be a diversion-proof mechanism for subsidy delivery. Through JAM, the government has transferred welfare benefits directly into the bank accounts of the underprivileged, eliminating intermediaries and delays.

During 2024-25, the government credited a total of ₹6.9 trillion into bank accounts under various DBT schemes, according to a finance ministry statement.

The average deposit per account stood at ₹4,768 (as of 13 August), up 3.7X compared to August 2015m, the statement added.

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“The Prime Minister, in his 2021 Independence Day speech, announced that every household should have a bank account and every adult should have insurance and pension coverage. With the continuous efforts in this direction through various saturation drives carried out across the country, we have achieved near saturation in bank accounts, and there has been a continuous rise in insurance and pension coverage across the country,” said Union minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary.

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