UIDAI is interested in exploring a partnership between the unique identification authority and private players to further the Digital India initiative, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Saurabh Garg said during a fireside chat with Meta India’s head of public policy Rajiv Aggarwal on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Fest 2022.
“Although the issues of privacy and consent remain paramount, we look forward to partnering with various private sector players for Digital India,” Garg said.
Touting the scale of Aadhaar, Garg said that 300 central schemes and 650 state-sponsored schemes deployed the unique identification project.
Addressing the gathering, Garg also noted that Aadhaar was being leveraged for effective delivery of financial services. He further said that the agency was working with regulators to expand its penetration in the fintech space.
“We have about eight crore authentications a day with nearly 40% of them for Aadhaar-enabled payment systems. So, the banking sector has leveraged the ecosystem. Going forward, we are working with regulators like the RBI to expand our reach to the fintech and NBFC sectors,” the UIDAI chief said.
Around 1.34 Bn Indians have been enrolled on the identity database in the decade since its launch, said the top official. It is pertinent to note that the project was kicked off back in 2009 under the aegis of the Ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY).
“We’re at a stage where 100% adult residents in the country have Aadhaar unless they belong to the remote pockets,” added Garg.
He further added, “Deduplication, removal of ghost beneficiaries, mitigation of leakage of funds and authentication are some of the benefits that Aadhaar offers.”
His statements comes a couple of days after UIDAI introduced the fingerprint ‘liveliness’ feature on its Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS). The new measure will increase the sensitivity of the hardware to determine whether the fingerprint being used belongs to a person who’s alive or not.
