Soon, you can pay using your finger or eye
Aadhaar Pay service will let people make and receive payments just by using their Aadhaar number and biometrics
NEW DELHI: Upbeat over the success of Rupay, a domestic card scheme, the Centre is all set to roll out the mother of all digital services – Aadhaar Pay – service that will enable people to make and receive payments just by using their Aadhaar number and biometrics. According to experts, the move is aimed at motivating people using debit/ credit cards to opt for Aadhaar payment gateway as it would help in resurrecting the Indian economy.
Interestingly, out of an average 20 lakh transactions every day, Visa, Mastercard and American Express together account for 80 percent, which amounts to 16 lakh transactions per day.
“Given that the three major swipe card service providers get Rs 3 every time a card is swiped, they make a neat Rs 48 lakh daily. Once the Aadhaar Pay is rolled out, a huge chunk would come into the exchequer,” an expert said, adding that being a public platform, the transactions charges would be lower as is the case with Rupay that charges just 0.45 paisa for every transaction.
As of now, 14 banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay, which is set to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in coming weeks. The government is also in talks with other banks too.
The 14 banks that will be part of the Aadhaar Pay platform include the State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India and ICICI Bank among others.
According to a source, the Ministry of Electronics and IT is awaiting security clearance and once it clears that hurdle, the payment module would be launched.
“We are going to start Aadhaar Pay. With this people will not be required to carry their phone for payments. They can visit any merchant, share their Aadhaar number and verify themselves using biometrics to pay and receive money,” Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said, adding that Aadhaar has already given unique numbers to 111 crore people in the country and almost 39 crore bank accounts are Aadhaar- linked.
“In less than six and a half years of its journey it has gone beyond being just a unique identification programme to become a critical development tool of public-centric good governance and targeted delivery of services, benefits and subsidies,” Prasad said, adding that almost 2 crore new people were linking their bank accounts with Aadhaar every month.
Aadhaar enrollment ecosystem with 135 registrars and 612 enrollment agencies working at 47,192 enrollment stations has been enrolling and updating 7-8 lakh requests per day.
Aadhaar generation as on May 31, 2014, was 63.22 crore with a daily enrollment trend of about 3-4 lakh which remained around 5-6 lakh per day till October 2016.
“However, since demonetisation the Aadhaar enrollment and update requests are in the range of 7-8 lakh per day. With over 47.8 crore Aadhaar accounts generated since June 2014, Aadhaar now stands at over 111 crore. The UIDAI, which has 28,332 permanent enrollment centres, has a capacity of generating and dispatching over 15 lakh Aadhaar cards every day,” the minister said.