Nepal's New Digital Payment Lottery: Why Your Family Should Use QR

What actually launched

Nepal's Taxpayer Incentive Gift Program 2026 went live in early August, run by the Inland Revenue Department in coordination with Nepal Rastra Bank. Any Nepali with a PAN who buys goods or services worth more than NPR 100 from a VAT or PAN-registered shop is automatically entered into a prize draw — no separate signup needed for digital payments. Pay by QR through eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, or ConnectIPS, and IRD pulls the transaction data directly from NRB's systems. Cash payments can still qualify, but only if the buyer manually uploads the bill at the government's prize.ird.gov.np portal — a real extra step that digital payment skips entirely.

What's actually up for grabs

The program runs two prize tiers: a daily prize of NPR 100,000 to one winner, and a bumper prize of NPR 750,000 every fifteen days, with draws held on the 1st and 16th of each Nepali month. There's no cost to enter beyond the purchase itself, and no cap on how many times someone can be entered — every qualifying purchase is a new entry.

Why this actually matters for remittances

Here's the connection worth passing along to family: money sent home from any corridor — whether through Wise, Remitly, or any other provider covered on our full corridor guide — usually ends up spent on everyday purchases: groceries, school fees, household goods. If that spending happens via QR or digital wallet rather than cash, it's now automatically entered into this draw, at zero extra cost or effort. It's a genuinely good reason to encourage family receiving remittances to lean into digital payment for routine spending, not just for the prize odds, but because it's also the more trackable, NRB-regulated way to handle money, as we covered in our recent look at digital wallet safety and compliance in Nepal.

A quick reminder on why digital delivery already made sense

This is a good moment to revisit how your family actually receives money in the first place. Several providers now support delivering funds directly into a digital wallet rather than a bank account — worth checking whether your corridor supports it, since it removes a step between the money landing and it being ready to spend digitally. Our corridor guides for UAE, Australia, and other sending countries cover which providers support direct wallet delivery for each specific route.

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See also: Remit Seas home · complete guide to sending money to Nepal from abroad · digital wallet safety and compliance · all Nepal remittance corridors · more guides on the blog