Aadhaar-based payment system in 50 districts

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has begun the process for rolling out an Aadhaar-based payment system in 50 districts across the country, Chairman Nandan Nilekani said on Wednesday.

Various entitlements and subsidy disbursals would start flowing from this platform to each of these districts, he told an AGM session of the Confederation of Indian Industry. “In the next one year, you will see much more evidence of how it works. Then it is going to be very important for inclusion,” Nilakeni said, while explaining the functioning of the platform that included biometric identification to the payment through banking correspondents.

The current move comes in the wake of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s target of an Aadhaar-based payment system in 50 selected districts in the budget in the next six months.

Nilekani said the UIDAI had so far enrolled about 200 million people, and issued Aadhaar numbers to 170 million residents. In the next three to four months, 200 million people will have Aadhaar numbers.

On the applications of Aadhar-based payment system, the UIDAI chairman said t pilot projects were being done in four districts of Jharkhand for NREGA, pension and scholarship payments. It was for the industry and other users now to look for more applications of this platform, he added.

The mobile phone industry is already looking at it as electronic KYC for issuing SIM cards.

One of the other applications would be creating a skills repository for use by various industries, Nilekani said. The UIDAI’s goals in the next one year was to ensure that 200 million people got their Aadhaar numbers, besides enrolling another 400 million (which has already started) and build applications, he added.