Aadhaar transaction number jump; deadline nears to link financial accounts

Almost 2 billion Aadhaar authentications were recorded last month, according to the Indian government. In all, 90.3 billion transactions have been authenticated.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT issued a statement saying that the large totals reflect how far India’s online economy has come.

Converted to Indian nomenclature, this means almost 200 crore authentications were conducted and 9029 crore in total have been recorded.

Of the Aadhaar authentications in January 1.35 billion, or 135 crore, were facilitated with biometric thumbprint scans supported by in-house AI and machine learning code capable of collecting finger image and minutia unveiled last month, according to The Economic Times.

The new algorithms can harvest a print and verify that it was live when scanned.

Adult acceptance of Aadhaar is “near universal,” according to financial news publisher Mint. Ninety-five percent of all ages, Mint writes, have their Aadhaar account.

About 300 million, or 29 crore, e-KYC transactions were recorded through January, and the total is 14 billion, or 1412 crore.

That number is liable to go up as a deadline nears to link Aadhaar and Permanent Account Number accounts, according to a second story in Mint. People have until March 31 to get it done.

The Permanent Account Number becomes invalid if unlinked April 1.

Merged government accounts make it easier to open a bank account and to file income tax returns.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  financial services  |  India  |  KYC