-These 22 financial companies include Godrej Finance, Amazon Pay (India) Pvt Ltd, Aditya Birla Housing Finance, Tata Motors Finance Solution, IIFL Finance and Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd
-AuroPay can commence Payment Aggregator business upon receiving the final Certificate of Authorization from RBI
New Delhi, NFAPost: The Finance Ministry has allowed 22 financial companies, including Amazon Pay (India) and Hero FinCorp, to undertake Aadhaar-based authentication of clients.
The ministry, through a notification, said these 22 companies, which are already reporting entities under the PMLA, will be able to verify the identity of clients and beneficial owners’ details using their Aadhaar numbers.
These 22 financial companies include Godrej Finance, Amazon Pay (India) Pvt Ltd, Aditya Birla Housing Finance, Tata Motors Finance Solution, IIFL Finance and Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd.
Nangia Andersen LLP Partner Sandeep Jhunjhunwala said that while Aadhaar authentication of clients is made available as one of the modes of verification for banking companies, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) provides that Aadhaar authentication can also be adopted by reporting entities other than banking companies as may be notified by the central government.
“Accordingly, the CG has notified a list of 22 financial institutions/intermediaries, which are permitted to use Aadhaar authentication to verify the identity of clients/ beneficial owners,” said Nangia Andersen LLP Partner Sandeep Jhunjhunwala.
The other modes of verification prescribed under the Money Laundering Act include offline verification under the Aadhaar Act, use of a passport and any other officially valid document or modes of identification as may be notified by the central government, and the client has a voluntary choice to opt for the mode of verification.
“In the interest of safeguarding the identity information and authentication records of individuals, the Money Laundering Act prohibits reporting entities from storing the Aadhaar number or core biometric information of the client, where Aadhaar is used to verify identity,” Jhunjhunwala added.
Aurionpro Payments gets RBI nod to operate as a payment aggregator
Aurionpro Payment Solutions Ltd (AuroPro) has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as payment aggregator under the Payment and Settlement Act, 2007. AuroPay can commence payment aggregator business upon receiving the final certificate of authorisation from RBI.
“We are extremely delighted to receive the in-principle approval from RBI to operate as a payment aggregator. This is a substantial stride forward in our mission to facilitate seamless online digital payments in the country, especially in the area of B2B payments,” said Balkrishna Pangam, chief executive officer (CEO) at Aurionpro Payment.
APSL is founded by Aurionpro Solutions Ltd which offers solutions in the fintech space.
“Our platform ‘AuroPay’ seeks to offer a bouquet of e-payment options which are safe, secure, user-friendly and affordable. The aim is to become a one-stop shop, offering a wide range of services in the payment ecosystem globally, catering to e-commerce businesses as well as SMEs which are rapidly adopting digital technologies,” the company said.
The licence to operate as a payment aggregator allows entities to accept payments made on e-commerce sites and merchants. They receive payments from customers, pool them and then transfer them to merchants after a period, saving them the hassle of creating their own payments system.
