Airtel, Vodafone roll out e-KYC for instant SIM activation

Country's two leading mobile operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are rolling out e-KYC service at their stores to help customers activate new SIMs instantly with Aadhaar number verification.

While Airtel has rolled out the service at its stores in Delhi-NCR, Vodafone is launching the facility across India from August 24.

Airtel had 25.4 crore subscribers while Vodafone had a base of 19.8 crore users as on May 2016, according to the Trai data.

"Customers walking in for a new connection at our stores will walk out talking in just a few minutes. We had partnered with the Department of Telecom (DoT) to pilot the Aadhaar based e-KYC solution and tested it successfully in two circles," Vodafone India Director (commercial) Sandeep Kataria said in a statement.

"Effective Wednesday, August 24, we are rolling it out across the country," Kataria said.

Airtel said the solution - currently live at its Delhi NCR stores - would be available at company-operated stores across the country over the next few days.

The eKYC facility would shortly also be extended to those stores which are not directly operated by the company, a Bharti Airtel spokesperson said.

Mobile customers opting for electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) verification just need to know their Aadhaar number, which along with their fingerprint, will be good enough for confirmation for both new pre-paid and post-paid connections.

In contrast to existing document-based process, the move is intended to cut down time for SIM activation as customer verification is done instantly.