Govt wants Aadhaar-enabled payment to replace cards

NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India has planned to increase biometric authentication capacity through Aadhaar to 40 crore a day from 10 crore to encourage more use of the platform for realising a cashless society.

The government is concurrently working on developing a common mobile phone app that can be used by shopkeepers and merchants for receiving Aadhaar-enabled payments bypassing credit and debit cards, pin and password. Through this mobile application, the handset will be used for authenticating biometrics of customers making Aadhaar enabled payment.

UIDAI will eventually increase its biometric authentication capacity to 40 crore, UIDAI Chief Executive Officer Ajay Bhushan Pandey told reporters here.

He further said, “We will create awareness about this mode of transactions. We will eventually create capacity for 40 crore authentications. on Wednesday, 1.31 crore Aadhaar-enabled biometric authentications were reported. We will increase it gradually.”

He explained that these biometric authentications include attendance marked by employees of government establishments.

The initiative can help the government deal with situations like recent demonetisation and curb black money menace while bringing in more financial transaction transparency. The 12-digit number has already been issued to 1.08 crore people and 99 per cent of adults have been covered.

People can link their Aadhaar with their bank accounts and use Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) for funds transfer, balance enquiry, cash deposits or withdrawals and inter-banking transactions. The biometric authentication capacity of AEPS is 10 crore, which will be eventually raised to 40 crore, the CEO said. AEPS allows users to make payments to merchants or shopkeepers without credit or debit cards.