It looks like the infrastructure for Aadhaar Pay is slowly falling into place. Mahindra Comviva, the VAS and finanical tech arm of Tech Mahindra, has launched a merchant acceptance solution for the newly launched Aadhaar Pay. The product called payPLUS Aadhaar Pay will use India Stack APIs to allow paperless merchant onboarding with Aadhaar and eKYC. Customers can pay using their bank account linked with Aadhaar. To process payments, the customers will need to provide their Aadhaar number to the merchant and authorize payment through their fingerprint. The solution requires a biometric device to be linked to merchant’s mobile phone for payment authentication but customers do not need the phone at all. The government launched the Aadhaar Pay last month. Currently, 14 banks have signed up for Aadhaar Pay as indicated by this Economic Times report. Meanwhile, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, IndusInd Bank and IDFC Bank are due to launch Aadhaar Pay soon, as indicated by this report. Meanwhile, a report by Mint points out that only merchants who are registered on the UIDAI database will be able to incorportae Aadhaar Pay. As of January, the number of bank accounts which are linked to the Aadhaar currently stands at 39 crore. Other payment systems linked to Aadhaar So far there are three other payment infrastructures which are linked or will be liked to the Aadhaar: - First is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Although the UPI curerently only maps a bank account to the registered mobile number. The…
