UIDAI Latest: From slashed Aadhaar authentication charges, AePS transactions to Aadhaar 2.0 - What you need to know

UIDAI Latest News: Over five crore Aadhaar authentication is taking place per day and around 40 crore last-mile banking transactions are being done every month through the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS).

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Aadhaar offline verification to be free always
While speaking at the 16th edition of India Digital Summit 2022, organised by IAMAI, Dr Saurabh Garg, CEO, UIDAI said, "We wanted anytime, anywhere authentication capabilities…For people who don’t want to use an online authentication facility, we have brought in the offline verification system and given it a legal basis. The offline verification is free for anyone to use."

He further added that Aadhaar is a public infrastructure and the goal is how we can make it accessible to all at nominal rates or free. Currently, more than 700 welfare schemes are using the Aadhaar infrastructure.

He reiterated that for individual residents Aadhaar authentication is free and will always remain free. Recently, UIDAI had slashed the price for authentication to Rs 3 from Rs 20 per instance to enable entities to leverage their infrastructure for providing ease of living to people through various services and benefits.

How to conduct AePS transactions?
One must note that AePS is a bank-led model which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transactions at PoS (MicroATM) through the Business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication, as per the NPCI website. AePS allows six types of transactions.

The only inputs required for a customer to do a transaction under this scenario are as follows:

1) Bank Name
2) Aadhaar Number
3) Fingerprint captured during enrollment

Aadhaar 2.0
Talking about Aadhaar 2.0, Dr. Garg mentioned that it will ensure faster automated biometric matching solutions, with a primary focus on the security of the ecosystem. He said that the authority is exploring possibilities for the usage of blockchain, quantum computing.

“We are looking at what blockchain has to offer, whether blockchain can be utilised in any manner for making decentralized-level solutions, it’s on the horizon. Cost-effective but secure Aadhaar data wall solutions, confidential computing, as a technology how we can use in authentication, are some of the possibilities we are exploring. In quantum computing, we need to look at whether there are quantum resilient security solutions," he added.