TSYS provides biometric support for India’s Saral Money program

TSYS has announced its technology is used to authenticate account holders for India’s new Saral Money program, which strives to give Aadhaar number holders access to prepaid Visa accounts.

Saral money works by issuing those with Aadhaar numbers a new Visa Instant Account and a pre-paid card immediately. Prior to this, Visa’s tough proof-of-identification registration policies have automatically excluded many people in India from participation, but by using widely-issued Aadhaar numbers as valid identification, the spread of financial services is much greater.

As reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, Saral Money will first be rolled out in New Delhi and the National Capital Region, and expansion for the rest of the country is set to be completed by the end of 2013.

“TSYS is proud to support Visa and the Saral Money program in India to enable broader access to financial services for Indian consumers,” Amit Sethi, managing director, India and Southeast Asia, TSYS said. “This initiative is a perfect example of TSYS’s recently reaffirmed commitment to people-centered payments.”

TSYS became a Visa biometric authentication provider for the Unique Identity Authority of India’s (UIDAI) platform in 2010 and expects significant growth opportunities in this space.

According to the company, TSYS has also been instrumental in setting up the Prepaid International Forum (PIF) chapter in India. A patron of the forum since 2007, TSYS is an advocate of prepaid as an alternative payment channel for financial inclusion in India.

“Visa continues to invest in new and innovative technologies to give more financially underserved consumers in developing countries access to electronic payments,” Darren Parslow, global head of Processing, Visa Inc. said. “The Saral Money program and the integration of biometric authentication technology provided by TSYS, is a good example of what we can achieve by tailoring Visa’s processing solutions to the needs of governments, consumers and financial institutions.”

 

Article Topics

authentication  |  banking  |  biometrics  |  financial services  |  fingerprint biometrics