The government will roll out Aadhaar Pay service through which people can make and receive payments using their Aadhaar number and biometrics.
Government will soon roll out Aadhaar Pay service that 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 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 today.
As of now, 14 banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay and the service will be launched soon, Prasad told reporters. "We are in talks with other banks too. The service will be launched very soon," he informed. 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 demonetization 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.
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