Aadhaar prepares to scale authentications to 300 million a day: UIDAI chief

UIDAI is also working on a 10-year technology roadmap that includes post-quantum cryptography, AI-based fraud detection and possible Aadhaar authentication outside India

Aadhaar is currently processing around 100 million authentications a day and is preparing to scale this to 250-300 million a day, Neelkantha Mishra, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said at the Global Fintech Festival 2026.

 

Mishra is also executive director at the World Bank Group, representing Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka.

 

“I’m surprised at the pace at which the authentications are growing. So we are now doing 10 crore authentications a day. We are preparing to be 25 to 30 crore,” Mishra said.

 

The number of entities using Aadhaar has also crossed 600, he said.

 

The growth marks a significant shift from the early years of Aadhaar, which began primarily as a government use case and had relatively limited use in its first three to four years.

 

 

Mishra said there was subsequently a cultural shift in how the government used Aadhaar, including for identifying beneficiaries and addressing misuse.

 

Over time, convenience and trust have emerged as key drivers of Aadhaar’s wider adoption, he said.

 

“For the efficiency of an economy to come up, you need collaboration. And for collaboration to happen at scale, you need trust. And a lot of the trust actually comes from proof of identity,” Mishra said.

 

“What Aadhaar has done is it has allowed trust to be established at a distance and at a very low cost,” he added.

 

The Aadhaar ecosystem is also moving from physical and paper-based processes to digital journeys through the Aadhaar app.

 

Downloads of the app have risen to nearly 60 million from 50 million just a few weeks ago, Mishra said.

 

The app allows users to update details such as their mobile number and address without having to visit an Aadhaar Seva Kendra.

 

Mishra said the app could also create a “flywheel”, with more downloads encouraging businesses to embed Aadhaar into their workflows, which in turn would lead to greater app usage.

 

Aadhaar has also become an important layer of India’s digital public infrastructure, with the infrastructure built around it enabling use cases beyond payments.

 

These include telecom enrolment and the gathering of risk capital, while further applications are expected as gig workers come into the system, Mishra said.

 

UIDAI is preparing for the next phase of Aadhaar’s technology architecture.

 

An Aadhaar Vision Committee met over four months and has drawn up a technology roadmap for the next 10 years, Mishra said.

 

One of the priorities is post-quantum cryptography.

 

“We are going to work on, or we are implementing, post-quantum cryptography,” he said, adding that public and private key systems could become vulnerable over the next three to five years and UIDAI wants to be prepared in advance.

 

UIDAI is also using artificial intelligence for fraud detection, including facial and fingerprint liveness testing.

 

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game. Basically, the fraudsters keep getting smarter, but we’re also getting smarter,” Mishra said.

 

UIDAI is also looking at allowing Aadhaar authentication outside India.

 

Mishra said the number of Indians living and travelling abroad could rise three to four times over the next few years, creating greater demand for authentication outside the country.

 

However, removing geofencing would also create security risks.

 

Aadhaar is critical infrastructure and UIDAI sees “hundreds of attacks every day”, he said.

 

At the back end, UIDAI is also building what Mishra described as a “hyperscaler-like capability”, benchmarked against leading systems globally.

 

“We would like to become the infrastructure that no one notices,” he said.

 

Mishra said discussions were also underway around a World Bank knowledge hub in India to take India’s digital public infrastructure experience to other developing economies.

 

“On some of the things we are way more advanced than most of the countries,” he said.

 

UIDAI is also looking to support startups and businesses developing new use cases around Aadhaar.

 

“Businesses, once you provide the right leverage, it’s the most optimal way states and government agencies should work. You provide the infrastructure, make it safe and secure, and then let people innovate,” Mishra said.

 

UIDAI is also working on an environment where developers, startups and others can collaborate, experiment and test solutions before they are moved into the operational environment.  

“So there’s a lot of innovation that is happening at the back end to make Aadhaar prepared for the next stage,” Mishra said.