Aadhaar Payment System Clears 200 Million Financial Transactions

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is celebrating a major Aadhaar milestone after revealing that the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) has now been used for more than 200 million transactions. The AePS crossed the 200 million threshold sometime in the past month, with more than 66 million Indian citizens using the service in July alone.

The figures indicate that India’s biometric national ID system is rapidly becoming more popular for a range of financial activities despite an Indian Supreme Court decision that limited the scope of the program. The Court ruled that the Indian government could not make Aadhaar a mandatory requirement for financial services, but new legislation made it clear that Aadhaar is still accepted and citizens can opt into the service if they so desire. It’s now evident that many people are indeed choosing to use AePS for deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and purchases.

The AePS links a bank account to an Aadhaar number, allowing people to use fingerprint authentication to carry out basic transactions at Point-of-Sale terminals and MicroATMs. The system has now performed more than 220 million transactions, with a cumulative financial value of 96.85 billion rupees. According to the NPCI, the AePS has raised financial inclusion in India, and helped give more people access to secure and reliable financial services.

Sources: The Economic Times, Financial Express

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August 12, 2019 – by Eric Weiss