The Centre on Friday said that it will soon launch ‘Aadhaar Pay’ service that will enable anyone with the Aadhaar identification number to transfer or receive money with his/her biometrics.
“We are going to start Aadhaar Pay. With this, people will not require to carry their mobile phone for payments. They can visit any merchant, share their Aadhaar number and verify themselves using biometrics to pay and receive money,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and IT, said here.
This will be available to all the persons having Aadhaar-linked bank accounts, whose number stands at 39 crore as of now, he said, adding that around two crore Aadhaar numbers are linked to various bank accounts every month.
As of now, 14 banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay and the Ministry is in talks with other banks too, he said.
The Minister also said the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app has also been integrated with the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System on Thursday.
Prasad said 119 banks are connected with the Aadhaar-enabled payment system and 33.87 crore transactions have taken place through it.
About ₹36,000 crore has been saved in the last two years due to the linking of Aadhaar with the public distribution system (PDS), including household LPG supply and MGNREGA, Prasad said. He added that 4.47 crore bank accounts have been opened with Aadhaar eKYC as compared to only one lakh accounts opened as of May 2014.
“There are 111 crore Aadhaar enrolments done so far out of the total population of 125 crore in India. Aadhaar is becoming a powerful instrument to bridge the digital divide,” he added.