Aadhaar authentication grows 44% in August to 2.2 bn, says IT ministry

Authentication of individuals using Aadhaar grew by 44 per cent to about 220 crore in August, the IT ministry said on Thursday.

As of end August 2022, a cumulative number of 8,074.95 crore Aadhaar authentications have been carried out so far, as against 7,855.24 crore such authentications by the end of July, indicating rise in use of Aadhaar based services.

"Aadhaar usage and adoption by residents is witnessing sizable growth indicative of how it is increasingly supporting ease of living for residents. In August, 219.71 crore authentication transactions were carried out via Aadhaar, a growth of more than 44 per cent against July 2022," the statement said.

Around 1,000 social welfare schemes in the country run by both Centre and states have been notified to use Aadhaar till date.

Aadhaar custodian Unique Identification Authority of India is in discussion with state government to onboard more services on Aadhaar platform.

A majority of these monthly transactions were done by using fingerprint biometric authentication (128.56 crore), followed by demographic authentications and OTP authentications.

The number of e-KYC (Know Your Customer) transactions executed via Aadhaar was 23.45 crore in August. The cumulative number of e-KYC transactions so far increased from 1,249.23 crore in July to 1,272.68 crore by end of August.

Under the Aadhaar Act, an e-KYC transaction can be done only with the explicit consent of the Aadhaar holder. The Aadhaar based e-KYC eliminates physical paperwork and in-person verification requirements for KYC.

Aadhaar e-KYC service is increasingly playing an important role for banking and non-banking financial services in providing better and transparent customer experience and ease of doing business.

In August, residents successfully updated 1.46 crore Aadhaars, and cumulatively till date (end of August) 65.01 crore Aadhaar numbers have been successfully updated following requests from the residents, according to the statement.