Users of Samsung Pay, BHIM and HDFC Bank's mobile banking app can now make UPI payments to Aadhaar numbers. This suggests that some parts of the second version of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) are live. It was reported that the second version of the UPI was supposed to be out in March 2017 and the draft paper had detailed out that it would be using the Aadhaar to map out financial addresses on the UPI. Samsung Pay's latest update said that users can pay by using the Aadhaar number, while BHIM shows that user can also use Aadhaar to pay. HDFC Bank's mobile banking app showed payment to Aadhaar as an option as well. Remember, when HDFC Bank launched UPI on its app in November 2016, the option to send money to an Aadhaar number was inactive. Meanwhile, the option to send money to an Aadhaar number is not active on other UPI apps such as PhonePe and Chillr. MediNama has written to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for more updates and we will update you once we hear from them. A reminder: So far, there are three other payment infrastructures which are linked or will be liked to the Aadhaar: – First is the Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS) is a financial inclusion product developed by the NPCI which allows cash withdrawal, deposit and funds transfer at POS (Micro ATM) through a business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication. So far, there are 119 banks on the AEPS. Most recently, Spice Money, the domestic…
