NEW DELHI: The central government has made the Bharat Interface for Mobile (BHIM) app Aadhaar-
enabled and it will launch the biometric based Aadhaar Pay payment module in the coming weeks, Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Friday.
Aadhaar Pay service will enable people to make and receive payments using their Aadhaar number and biometrics.
“We are going to start Aadhaar Pay. With this, people will not need 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,” Prasad said.
As of now, 14 banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay and the government is in talks with other banks, too, Prasad added.
Aadhaar has already given unique numbers to around 111 crore people in the country and almost 49 crore bank accounts are linked to Aadhaar. “Every month, 2 crore accounts are being seeded with Aadhaar,” the minister added.
Transactions, where Aadhaar is listed as a payment ID on the BHIM app, will not require any biometric authentication or prior registration with the bank or Unified Payment Interface (UPI). Aadhaar enrolment is carried out by 135 registrars and 612 agencies working at 47,192 enrolment centres.
Post demonetiation, Aadhaar enrolment jumped to 7-8 lakh requests from 5-6 lakh requests a day. However, there are some Aadhaar enrolment centres which are charging fees in the range of Rs 100-Rs 300 despite repeated clarification from Unique Identification Authority of India that it is meant to be provided free.
Earlier, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI, had said he would favour ‘incentives’ for shopkeepers using the biometric mode for digital transactions, in line with commission given by banks to business correspondents. Doing this would be a win-win for banks too, Pandey had said.