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Aadhaar custodian UIDAI is looking to onboard more non-banking financial companies to authenticate users online, a top official of the department said on Wednesday. Online authentication of Aadhaar is is required for giving people access to various government schemes and even some corporate services.
During his address at FICCI Annual Capital Markets Conference, UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg said nearly 155 Sebi-regulated entities have been notified for authentication services over the past few months and nearly 100-odd entities which are regulated by RBI have also been notified.
"I think a lot more activity and a lot more entities would be able to do the eKYC even through the online mechanism. We are still talking of 200 or 300 entities, but we have more than 9,000 NBFCs who are regulated by Sebi or RBI or working with PFRDA. I think that the real opportunity going forward is how each one of those agencies can utilise the strength of Aadhaar for doing the eKYC using the Aadhaar platform," Garg said.
Aadhaar Act
He said a number of agencies are unable to become authentication agencies because of the Aadhaar Act, which focuses more on transfer of benefits and services and subsidies from the central government or the state governments.
"We have enabled in the last one year a couple of initiatives which will be of an active interest to the corporate sector and one of them is the offline verification services. But the offline verification is in the nature of a direct relationship between the resident and the corporate who's performing that particular function," Garg said.
Offline verification of Aadhaar users can be done by various modes such as using QR code on an Aadhaar card or using a file that can be downloaded by the resident and shared with the corporates like telecom operators etc. for eKYC. Garg said that the country has reached a point where nearly 100 per cent of adults, who are residents of India, have Aadhaar.
He said that with this kind of reach of Aadhaar, programmes and schemes can be planned, which have a universal coverage and that can ride on the Aadhaar digital infrastructure like the Direct Benefit Transfer schemes.
"While on the government side, we already have 1,000-odd schemes. We are working with state governments and the central government to look at whether all beneficiary oriented schemes or even going to a group of beneficiaries, for example a family or a self-help group, can be brought on the Aadhaar digital platform," Garg said.
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