A Indian Banks’ Association official has said banks are not averse to implementing the biometric verification of customers linking them to the Aadhaar database. “However, we would also want to ensure if it is technically feasible and economically viable,” Mohan Tanksale, Chief Executive, IBA said.

Tanksale told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a CEO panel discussion on “Capacity Building in Traditional Private Banks – Relevance of Gopalakrishna Committee Report” held here last week that the technical feasibility and economic viability of biometric authentication is being analysed in detail.

The working group of IBA that is studying the biometric verification issue is expected to submit its findings to the RBI in one or two months.

Stating that the biometric authentication has been a contentious issue with banks, which have migrated from magnetic stripe cards to comparatively safer chip and PIN-based cards, he said the infrastructure needs will have to be upgraded. “We should look at ATMS and PoS (Point of Sale) terminal in a more positive manner. There are about 1.6 lakh ATMs, 10 lakh PoS machines and over 45 crore debit cards in the market. If we want to move from cash to plastic card, proper awareness is required.”

“We are working on it and open to doing it in a phased manner. This would no doubt require significant investment that has to be borne by banks. But everything can’t be for free,” Tanksale said.

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