Don’t have Aadhaar card? It will soon be single-point for e-payments

IndiaPost will be rolling out its Payments Bank which will use customer’s Aadhaar card number for transactions without the use of a bank account, a report by Economic Times said on Tuesday.

The report said that over 112 crore Indians will be able to send and receive money solely on the basis of the Aadhaar number even though it is not a payment address in itself.

IndiaPost CEO, A P Sigh, was quoted in the report who said that its payments bank, which is scheduled to begin operations from September 2017 seeks to make its presence felt in a minimum of 650 districts of India in the initial stage.

Singh further said that the bank aims to ‘simplify and universalise’ the payments systems.

Nearly 40 crore bank accounts in the country are linked with Aadhaar, and every month about two crore people are linking their accounts with the unique number.

The Aadhaar card mission was suggested to the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee back in 2000 under the proposal that citizens in villages in border region be issued identity cards on a priority basis, later such ID cards should be issued to all people living in border states.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up by the Government of India in January 2009 which is now known as Aadhaar number.

In an earlier announcement the government said that the Aadhaar number will also be necessary to receive subsidy goods from June this year.

"We will make all 5.58 lakh ration shops Aadhar-enabled by June 30. We are in discussion with Food and Consumer Affairs Ministry for this," IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

During demonetisation of higher denomination currency notes there were 25.7 million and 26.9 million Aadhaar-enabled payment system transactions in October and November, respectively.