The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is working on a set of new initiatives to help residents use Aadhaar voluntarily for availing multiple services of their choice, a move that would expand usage of Aadhaar and support Ease of Living. This initiative leverages three existing Aadhaar components – Offline KYC Verification, Local Face Matching, and mAadhaar Application to unlock new user experience.

This was demonstrated at the Global Fintech Fest 2022, here in Mumbai, which is one such exercise to make the burgeoning Fintech industry aware of the latest developments and to seek their feedback.

The guiding principles of these initiatives are – simplicity in usage for the residents, respecting the privacy of every individual, and empowering residents to share their information voluntarily to transact and avail of a host of services of their choice, explained Dr. Saurabh Garg, CEO, UIDAI.

 Simplicity is achieved by focusing on residents’ experience and allowing residents to voluntarily share their Offline KYC information without any connectivity to the UIDAI backend and establish Proof of Presence using the mAadhaar application on their own smartphones.

 This ensures privacy, as it does not require the sharing of the resident’s Aadhaar number. Moreover, Proof of Presence can be established through local matching on the residents’ own smart-phone. In addition, a resident has control of sharing only the self-selected KYC fields with the service provider and business application in a secure manner.

Voluntary use of Offline KYC with two factor authentication can help residents in availing multiple services at a time services across sectors and sub sectors are getting unbundled, choices are myriad and aspirations of residents to avail seamless services and benefits are growing faster. UIDAI through Aadhaar, which is a platform for enabling good governance and ease of living, is continuously working to empower residents.

These proposed features are proof concepts and would undergo a thorough consultation with all the stakeholders including the public and experts. These initiatives will be finalized after the due consultation and after following required rules and protocols, and once finalized allow residents to harness their own information voluntarily to avail of services.

Aadhaar saturation is near universal among adult residents in India, and among the overall population, it has a saturation level of nearly 94%. UIDAI is touching the lives of residents more than 7 crore times a day via various authentications. Once implemented the new initiatives will further expand the use of offline authentication and shall support residents in getting services of choice via voluntary usage of Aadhaar.

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