Savings Accounts, Aadhaar to Be Linked to Make Digital ‘Seamless’

The government plans to link all accounts to Aadhaar number to enable digital transactions for non-smartphone users.

In a move to push Narendra Modi’s “cashless economy” agenda, the government is planning to link all savings accounts with the Aadhaar numbers.

This move will allow account holders to carry out digital transactions at, say, retail points, The Times of India reported. More so, it will come in handy for India’s 30 crore non-smartphone users who are unable to make online transactions, and are forced to rely on cash.

According to TOI’s sources, the plan has been approved by Modi, who has now asked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to carry out the implementation.

The higher the linkages with the Aadhaar number, the more we have in terms of seamless digital transactions.

Ravi Shankar Prasad

Explaining the details of the measure, TOI quoted sources:

All that is required will be devices that support Aadhaar and biometric at the retail points. If anybody needs to make a transaction even without a phone, he or she just needs to log into his account through the Aadhar biometric link and make the payment. This will make digital transactions easy as no connectivity will be required at the consumer’s end.

In turn, the Reserve Bank of India has been insisting on the deployment of point-of-sale machines, with the option of Aadhaar, across the retail set-up. It is pushing for making the feature a must for new deployments.

(Source: Times of India)