Aadhar cards to double up as debit cards

The NDA Government will target growing the ambit of Aadhar for cashless transactions through the Aadhar Enabled Payment System. 

Under the service, Aadhar cardholders will be given the option of debiting or crediting money to their Aadhar linked bank accounts. Recipients will have to key in their Aadhar id number and undergo a fingerprint or iris scanner verification for each transaction. 

Speaking at a press conference at Niti Aayog about the alternatives of physical currency, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said, “There are currently 1.31 crore transactions per day through Aadhar and we can handle up to 10 crore transactions per day. We will soon be able to manage 40 crore transactions each day.” 

Commenting on the issue of privacy associated with Aadhar-enabled transactions, Pandey said, “The Aadhar laws are such that we cannot ascertain whether a certain transaction is a credit, debit or anything else. There will be utmost privacy for all such Aadhar-linked operations.” 

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant noted that there will soon be an Android mobile app to enable Aadhar-linked banking services. 

He said, “In another 15 days there will be an Android app to allow cell phones with external or in-built retina and fingerprint scanners to allow these services.” 

Kant noted that the government will also grow the ambit of four more cashless transaction services. 

He said that these will be Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) for GSM phones, e-Wallets and Unified Payments Interface for smart phones, and debit, credit and prepaid cards for PoS machines.