Nandan Nilekani advises NPCI on Aadhaar-backed payments

MUMBAI: Nandan Nilekani who had the Unique Identification Authority of India last year to fight elections is now advising National Payments Corporation of Indian on public policy and innovation including the use of Aadhaar for payment authentication.

It has been over two-months since the former software czar took over this honorary position. Besides facilitating direct benefit transfer Aadhaar will also be used as an authentication tool in transactions.

The unique Identification Authority of India which issues the Aadhaar id card was a brainchild of the UPA government as also was the idea of using Aadhaar to facilitate direct benefit transfers to individual bank accounts.

While there was some speculation that Aadhaar might lose steam with the Modi government coming to power, the new government actually gave it a further impetus with the Jan Dhan Yojana ensuring that all recipient of government benefits had bank accounts.

Confirming Nilekani's role, AP Hota, MD & CEO, NPCI said Nilekani is a honorary advisor. The corporation has widened the scope of the Aadhaar Mapper by renaming it the National Financial Mapper and including in addition to Aadhaar number an individual's email and mobile number which will be mapped to individual bank account.

Creation of the National Financial Mapper will enable banks to remit money to individuas based on any one identifier including mobile number, email or Aadhaar.

Hota said that NPCI will soon launch a unified payment interface which will account holders to send and receive money from their smartphones and do away with the need for physical cards.