Cashless made easy: Aadhar app for merchants to be launched tomorrow

In an aim to move towards cash less society, the government is coming up with an app that would do away with plastic cards and the point of sale machines. Scheduled to be launched tomorrow, this would eliminate the fees charged by card companies, which would eventually make merchants agree to switch completely to digital mode.

Merchants need to download the Aadhaar cashless merchant app on their smartphones connected to a biometric reader, which is currently available for Rs 2,000. The customer will then feed his or her Aadhar number into the app, select the bank through which the transaction will take place, and the biometric scan will work as a password for the transaction to be authenticated. "This app can be used by a person to make payments without any phone,'' Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey told ET. "Almost 40 crore Aadhaar numbers already stand linked to bank accounts - that is half the adults in India. The aim is to link all Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts by March, 2017."

"The settlement is done through the Aadhaar bridge, which means it connects a much wider set of people," Rajiv Lall MD & CEO at IDFC Bank told The Economic Times."Anybody who has Aadhaar seeding done can make payments to merchants with this app. It wouldn't matter if the person does not have a credit or debit card, or even a mobile phone.'' The acceptance of point of sale terminals in the country has been slow with only 15 lakh terminals deployed by various banks.

SBI alone has deployed over 3 lakh terminals followed by HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.