Soon You Will Be Able To Get And Pay Money Using Just Aadhaar Number, No Need Of A Bank Account

Your 12-digit Aadhaar number could soon become your single-point payment address.

With the upcoming payments bank by IndiaPost, over 112 crore Indians will be able to send and receive money only on the basis of the Aadhaar number; it won't matter whether it is linked to a bank account or not.

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IndiaPost CEO AP Singh told ET that currently, Aadhaar is not a payment address in itself, but the payments bank, which plans to start operations from September 2017, will change that. The bank, which hopes to cover at least 650 districts of the country in the initial stage, aims to ¡°simplify and universalise¡± payments systems.

¡°We will bring out a solution to make Aadhaar a payment address, which will work with or without a bank account. That means that people who already have an Aadhaar should be able to receive payment from any source,¡± Singh, who was part of the founding team of Aadhaar as the deputy director general of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said.

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According to Singh, UIDAI had earlier successfully run a pilot with five banks including the State Bank of India to test the model. But the plans could not be taken ahead, he said, adding that given the state of broadband in the country and people¡¯s lack of comfort with mobile applications, an Aadhaar-based payment method will make giving and receiving money easier.

Currently, about 40 crore bank accounts in the country are linked with Aadhaar, and every month about two crore people are linking their accounts with the unique number.

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Singh had told ET earlier in an interview that the bank's approach would be ¡°bottoms-up¡± and it will target around 500 million people who have feature phones and around 350 million who are without any phone. ¡°Our USP could be the door-to-door banking with the help of our postmen, which nobody else is doing,¡± he said.

IndiaPost's rival Paytm is yet to start its payments bank, but Airtel Payment Bank, launched in November last year, is luring customers with attractive interest rates and its wide reach through its telecom network.