The Reserve Bank Of India has issued a notification allowing banks to consider letters issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for Aadhaar numbers as a valid Know your Customer (KYC) document to enable customers to open all savings accounts and not just no-frills or small accounts, reports LiveMint. According to the RBI, a Government notification issued in December 2010, permitted Banks to allow users to open no-frills bank accounts with limitations. For example, the aggregate credit for a given financial year cannot exceed Rs 1 lakh, the balance cannot exceed Rs 50 thousand and monthly withdrawals were limited to Rs 10,000. After consultation with the Government the RBI has now allowed banks to open all kinds of savings account on the basis of the Aadhaar letter. However, it has asked the banks to satisfy themselves about the current address of the customer by obtaining required proof of the same as per extant instructions. Last week, RBI had suggested that banks could use Aadhaar based biometric verification for additional authentication to reduce frauds in credit and debit card transactions. The banks are required to implement these authentication processes within two years. Aadhar Authentication An Authorised User agency such as a the Government, Banks, insurance companies can deploy UID for transactions or also as KYC -Know your customer document. All authentication user agencies need a license key. So it can ask an individual to furnish his Aadhaar number along with other demographic details such as Name or Gender and also a biometric attribute such as a…
