Banks will soon offer account holders the option to use Aadhaar and OTP instead of debit cards to use the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service. According to an English newspaper, the feature was first introduced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in September 2021. Customers who do not have a debit card or whose debit card is not activated will be able to use the UPI service through this new feature, the report said.
A statement from NPCI said that this was made possible by the association of NPCI with the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the bank's customers. NPCI had made this feature available. It was now the responsibility of the bank to make it available to the customers. According to the press release, Aadhaar OTP authentication can be used instead of debit card to bring the customer to Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In which Aadhaar OTP can be used along with debit card.
Banks will have to implement it by March 15
The deadline for implementation was set for December 15, 2021, with details of the new feature and guidelines. In view of the ongoing preparations for the second priority product feature in the ecosystem, the implementation deadline has been extended to March 15, 2022. However, the mobile number that has been linked to the Aadhaar number. The same number needs to be registered with the bank. Only such customers can avail UPI payment facility through Aadhaar. Currently, most bank applications require customers to authenticate themselves with a debit card. This means that only those who have digital banking can use the UPI feature.
According to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana website, there are more than 45 crore such beneficiary accounts. About 300 million customers live in rural and semi-rural areas. So, only 31.4 crore beneficiaries have received Rupee debit cards. In addition, many account holders have not activated their debit cards.