Aadhaar payments system linked to 119 banks

Aadhaar is becoming a powerful instrument to bridge the digital divide, says Ravi Shankar Prasad

The ministry of electronics and information technology said 119 banks had been connected with the Aadhaar-enabled payments system and 338.7 million transactions had taken place.

“Aadhaar is becoming a powerful instrument to bridge the digital divide,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for law and information technology.

The government will soon roll out the Aadhaar Pay service. “With this, people can visit any merchant, share their Aadhaar numbers and verify themselves using biometrics to pay and receive money,” Prasad said.

The minister said Rs 36,000 crore had been saved in the past two years by linking Aadhaar with services such as ration shops and cooking gas. He added 44.7 million accounts had been opened with Aadhaar eKYC. Fourteen banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay. “We are in talks with other banks,” Prasad said. The Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), a platform for making quick payments using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), was integrated with the Aadhaar-enabled payments system on Thursday. Aadhaar had a daily enrolment and update trend of 500,000-600,000 till October 2016, which has risen to 700,000-800,000 since demonetisation. “There are 490 million bank accounts linked to Aadhaar. Every month, 20 million accounts are being seeded with Aadhaar,” Prasad said.

The government would look into complaints that some Aadhaar centres were charging Rs 100-300 despite clarifications from the Unique Identification Authority of India that enrolment was free, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, the authority’s CEO said. Since demonetisation 83.9 million Aadhaar-enabled payments system transactions have taken place, of which 37.3 million were in December and 20.6 million in the first 15 days of January.

There were 25.7 million and 26.9 million Aadhaar-enabled payment system transactions in October and November, respectively.