Thumb impressions are going to make a comeback for paying and receiving money, if the recent announcement by the Union Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is any indication. It may, however, not be in the manner in which it was used earlier, where illiterate people used their thumb impressions in place of signatures.

Announcing that the government will soon launch Aadhaar Pay, Ravi Shankar Prasad had recently said that this mode of payment would help people whose Aadhaar numbers are linked to their bank accounts make and receive payments with their thumb impressions alone.

He was betting on the potential of 39-crore Aadhaar-linked bank accounts for Aadhaar Pay in a country that has around 111 crore Aadhaar numbers.

In fact, accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) will contribute a majorly to this initiative.

Thanks to the demonetisation of specified bank notes on November 8, there has been stromg growth in the number of Aadhaar-linked PMJDY accounts also.

Of the 27.77 crore PMJDY accounts in the country as on February 22, nearly 16.89 crore have already been seeded with Aadhaar numbers. One year ago — on February 26, 2016 — the country had 21 crore PMJDY accounts, and around 9.16 crore accounts were seeded with Aadhaar numbers then. The country added 6.77 new PMJDY accounts in a year, and the Aadhaar seeding of PMJDY accounts crossed 7.73 crore during the same period.

The Aadhaar-linked PMJDY accounts contribute nearly 15.21 per cent to the total of around 111 crore Aadhaar numbers in the country, and 43.3 per cent to around 39 crore bank accounts linked with Aadhaar numbers.

Aadhaar is a biometric-based identification programme with a real-time online authentication infrastructure. The Unique Identification Authority of India has generated around 111 crore Aadhaar numbers as on January in a country of more than 125-crore population.

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