Niti Aayog to hold meeting with digital payments industry on KYC issue

Niti Aayog will hold a meeting with all the stakeholders in digital payments industry over customer authentication issue after the Supreme Court verdict that restricted the use of Aadhaar details for KYC in availing host of services, including banking and telecom.

"I will have a round table with the stakeholders. There are some issues which have come up from the industry, we will sit down and see what the issues are and find out how to move forward. The industry is saying that it may hamper the digital payments system," said Ratan Watal, Member Secretary PMEAC and Principal Advisor, Niti Aayog on the sidelines of a digital payments programme.

Ficci and the Niti Aayog Monday jointly organised a workshop on the 'Online Digital Payments Programme' aimed at capacity building and imparting training to the officials working in this area.

In its ruling on September 26, the Supreme Court had declared the government's flagship Aadhaar scheme as constitutionally valid but struck down some of its provisions including its linking with bank accounts, mobile phones and school admissions.

Also, it is not mandatory for school admissions, as also for the examinations conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Examination, National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical entrance and the University Grants Commission.

However, it remains mandatory for filing of IT returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN).

Watal said even as digital payments have been going up, there is a need to work further with the payments systems and see areas such as banking and financial institutions where officials need to be trained.

They also need to be trained formally about what digital payment mechanism is, how it works, what are the legal frameworks, international ramifications, among others.

He said a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by the Niti Aayog, Department of Telecommunications and United Nations' specialised unit -- International Telecommunication Union (ITU) -- few months ago.

"ITU has done a lot of work in this field in the emerging economies on digital payments. With their help we prepared a three module programme aimed at how to improve digital payment space in India," he said.

He also said that the Niti Aayog had requested ITU to help India in the digital payment space as well as capacity building.

"If they have some programmes or training on AI or blockchain we can use that. At this stage, it is just an idea, so let's see how to go about with this," Watal said.