Cashless transactions: Govt to roll out Aadhaar Pay, 14 banks already on board

Pic for representational purpose

New Delhi: Taking another step closer towards a cashless economy, the Modi government is all set to roll out Aadhaar Pay service that will enable people to make and receive payments using their Aadhaar number and biometrics.

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday informed that 14 banks were already on board for the Aadhaar Pay services.

"We are going to start Aadhaar Pay. With this people will not require 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," Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said

The minister also informed that the government was already in talks with other banks too and that the Aadhaar Pay service would be launched very soon.

According to sources, some banks have already developed their application and testing it in Andhra Pradesh.

Further, the Minister said, Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), the common platform for making quick payments using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), has also been integrated with Aadhaar Enabled Payment System on Thursday.

Over 111 crore people in the country now have Aadhaar numbers. The minister said that people often raise concern over privacy breach but the Aadhaar Act completely respects privacy of people.

"We all know the Aadhaar was started by previous government but at that time it was only a digital identity of citizen of India. Under the government led by Narendra Modi, due to various initiative taken, it has become powerful tool of financial and future transformation," Prasad said.

Aadhaar generation as on May 31, 2014 was 63.22 crore with per day enrolment or update trend of about 3-4 lakh which remained around 5-6 lakh per day till October 2016.

However, since demonetisation, the Aadhaar enrolment and update requests are in the range of 7-8 lakhs per day, as per an official statement.

"There are 49 crore bank accounts linked to Aadhaar. Every month 2 crore accounts are being seeded with Aadhaar," Prasad said.

The minister said that Aadhaar Pay Enabled System is already in works and 33 crore transactions have been made on it in rural India.

Post demonetisation till January 15 over 8.39 crore AEPS transactions have happened in the field. Of this, over 3.73 crore transactions took place in December 2016 and 2.06 crore transactions in first 15 days of January 2017. Earlier AEPS transactions were about 2.57 crore and 2.69 crore in October and November 2016, respectively.

Prasad said that use of Aadhaar for transaction has led to saving of Rs 36,144 crore in fiscal year 2014-15 and 2015-16.

With PTI Inputs