Indian companies cannot use Aadhaar data. Who can dominate
the Indian identity authentication market?
Imagine that you are driving steadily on a hilly road.
Suddenly a landslide is blocking the road ahead. You have to slam the brakes.
The journey is suddenly interrupted. I don't know how to reach your
destination. After the Supreme Court of India announced the Aadhaar judgment,
the Indian fintech industry is in such a state.
The Supreme Court of India announced on September 26 that it
banned private companies from accessing biometric databases. Because Aadhaar
only earns a nominal fee and can remotely access rural markets and urban poor
areas, the ban has caused a heavy blow to the banking industry and the wider
financial services industry.
Indian Unique Identification Authority (UIDAI) Proposal
Since then, technology companies have been looking for viable
alternatives. The Indian Unique Identification Authority (UIDAI) has proposed a
new method that can manage Aadhaar and manage offline citizen registration.
According to the process, any entity accessing the Aadhaar number online must
download a new QR code or XML format from the UIDAI website. This method can protect
the security of citizen biometric data and protect the privacy of the 12-digit
unique identification number.
However, the fintech industry is not interested in this
option.
IDfy is a Mumbai technology startup that provides identity
verification services. Its CEO Ashok Hariharan said, "The Aadhaar XML
process includes many steps, including obtaining a one-time password (OTP),
selecting a series of permissions, and downloading XML files. Used as an ID.
The whole process is very complicated. If there are other options, most users
will choose to use other IDs instead of Aadhaar. "
Mobile Numbers mismatch Aadhaar database
According to industry insiders, another problem is that the
Internet bandwidth in remote locations is limited, and page jumps may occur
during online process jumps. In addition, in many cases, the mobile phone
number does not match the number in the Aadhaar database.
"Downloading XML files and new QR codes will be the last
mile challenge because users need to complete OTP-based authentication before
they can download files. If customers use different mobile phone services,
identity authentication may fail." Fino Payments Bank products Head of
Ashish Ahuja said.
Customer absorption
The biggest challenge facing fintech entities is to attract
customers remotely. With Aadhaar, consumers don’t have to fill out a lot of
paperwork, and they can access services through smartphones or computers even
if they are far away.
"The biggest problem for us is that the client suddenly
disappeared during the registration process, and Aadhaar solved this problem to
a large extent," said a senior director of an anonymous fintech company in
Bangalore that provides investment solutions. "Consumer The person can
fill out the form in a few seconds, get the digital signature of the file through
Aadhaar, and complete the identity verification through biometric technology.
This process only accounts for a small part of the actual cost. "
Companies benefiting from this include digital loan companies
such as Capital Float, Lendingkart, Early Salary, and investment startups such
as Zerodha who want to be close to consumers digitally.
"If you have to manually collect the documents, the cost
will increase greatly. In addition, it is very likely that the document is
filled in incorrectly," said Nithin Kamath, CEO of Zerodha. "If a
signature is missing, the agent must go a long way. Let the parties make up.
"
Whether it is Kotak’s 811 plan or the National Bank of India’s concept of attracting a new generation of customers through YONO, it shows
that banks also provide services to customers through digital means.
Deepak Sharma, Chief Digital Officer of Kotak Mahindra Bank,
said, "We are working hard to digitize the process and further realize
paperlessness at the branch. Now that only direct benefit transfer (DBT)
customers can use Aadhaar data, we must create a seamless customer experience
from scratch . "
In addition to fintech companies and traditional banks, the
pressure on payment banks is not small. The state commissioned these entities
to popularize digital payments to the masses.
For example, Fino Payments Bank
relies on Aadhaar as the main body to provide services to migrant workers or
customers from the rural poor. And now customers will absorb fees five times
more than before, especially for manual collection of documents.
"The seamlessness of Aadhaar has greatly accelerated the
account opening process. In addition, for our customer base, Aadhaar is easy to
obtain. They have no way to provide other supporting documents." Ahuja
from Fino Payments Bank said.
Recurring payment issues
Affected by mobile wallets and the unified payment interface
(UPI), digital payments are becoming more and more common, but the regular
payment process still requires manual intervention, including the payment of
equivalent monthly installments (EMI) and system investment plans (SIP) for
mutual funds.
The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) solves this
problem through an electronic authorization system based on the National
Automatic Clearing House (NACH) platform.
Consumers do not need to fill out a large number of
documents, they can automatically debit their accounts using biometric
databases by issuing electronic authorizations. NPCI said that due to court
orders, it had to stop all eNACH authorizations last month and required all
banks to move to online banking and debit card authorization.
PayU India operates the "Buy Now, Pay Later"
product called LazyPay, and its general manager Jitendra Gupta stated that
"eNach is the main mode of deduction from the customer's LazyPay loan
account. It has now been terminated and the operation side is completely beaten
Chaos. "
Gupta said that banks must manually verify customer
signatures, greatly affecting turnaround time and cost efficiency. "The
entire process takes 10-15 days, compared to only two seconds before. In
addition, the cost of collecting NACH has increased dramatically, which seriously
affects the user experience."
A senior banker said that if a customer initiates a process
online, then assume that he or she can use online banking or debit cards as
payment tools. The bank can solve this problem by enabling other modes of
eNACH. "However, now that a lot of paperwork is required, the process
becomes very troublesome."
Business uncertainty
These problems have adversely affected the business
environment and damaged the confidence of entrepreneurs to carry out innovative
business. Many businesses are built on Aadhaar. These businesses help poor
people enjoy financial inclusion through Jan Dhan accounts, mobile phones and
unique identification numbers. The Supreme Court's decision suddenly changed
all this.
PayNearby claims to support more than 28% of Aadhaar bank
payments, and its general manager Anand Kumar Bajaj said, "Enterprises
have invested a lot of money to install dongle in retail stores to identify
customer biometric technology data. And now all this is useless. "
The Reserve Bank of India requires payment companies to
complete the complete "KYC" process. When the purse company issued a
call for the high cost of KYC, the country told them to invest in the eKYC
model to save costs.
An anonymous senior manager of a payment company said,
"Now we do not have eKYC, and a few months later is the deadline for the
conversion of a half-KYC wallet to a full KYC wallet. We don't know when the
alternative method will take effect."
February 28 was the deadline for the conversion of the complete
KYC wallet, otherwise it will be invalid
Many early-stage startups have also flourished through
customer certification. Entities such as DigiO, Idfy and Khosla Labs have
established themselves as intermediaries such as financial service providers
Zerodha and PayU India.
"After Aadhaar's service was interrupted, revenue fell
by more than 30%. We had to find alternative mechanisms to keep the business
model running," said Ashf Hariharan of IDfy. "We also have a
sub-authentication user agent (AUA) license, which is now invalid. . It is also
a loss for us. "
However, Hariharan said that the business cannot be stagnant.
As a technology company, IDfy uses video and machine learning capabilities to
innovate and explore other ways to complete customer verification.
What should we do now?
Sharma from Kotak Mahindra Bank said, "We are looking
for a reliable alternative mechanism, offline Aadhaar seems to be the second best
solution. We are working with NPCI to develop other methods, such as through
online banking or debit card authorization Complete the authorization as an
alternative to eNACH. "
Kamath from Zerodha also said that the company has switched
to video KYC and DigiLocker, and plans to switch to XML-based KYC and video to
attract customers. He said that there may be a higher customer decline rate,
but the company must bear it.
Another major problem facing the company is front-end
employee training. In the past few years, with the digitization of processes,
intermediaries and employees have learned to switch to tablets and smartphones
to use eKYC, and now they must return to other forms such as paper or XML and
video.
Fino Payments Bank relies on bank intermediaries to establish
contact with people in remote rural areas. The bank ’s Ahuja said, "It
took a lot of time to train employees to use eKYC. Now we must re-train in
other modes, and the literacy rate of the last mile is always Is a challenge. "
Another trend for many startups is to move from online
products to omnichannel products. Vivek Belgavi, financial technology leader of
PricewaterhouseCoopers India, said, "Businesses are resuming
acquisitions."
Banks can go back and change the direction of development,
because they are mainly for the purpose of experimenting with technological
products, but for early entities that may not be able to obtain investor
support in many cases, the situation may be more difficult.
Large, well-funded technology companies such as Google,
WhatsApp and Chinese companies have begun to enter the Indian fintech field,
making the local technology startups difficult. In addition to competition from
global players, the regulatory environment is constantly changing, and local
companies have to fight on both fronts simultaneously.
As the founder of a digital loan startup said, you can sit
back and regret the things you lost, or you can pick up stones, clear the road
and move forward. The situation can't stop you from being annoyed, so Indian
companies are actively looking for alternative business models.
JAM (Jan
Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile)
PricewaterhouseCoopers Belgavi said, "JAM (Jan
Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) is only the first intervention, and the financial
technology field needs more such intervention. All forces must be mobilized,
whether it is policy, innovation or technology, to solve The issue of financial
inclusion. "
India builds the world's largest biometric data system
According to the
Times of India, the Unique Identification Project (also known as the Aadhar
Project) launched by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has
completed the collection of biometric data for 820 million people. The project
has become the world's largest biometric data project, covering 67% of India's
population.
The data shows that the FBI's biometric database is 150 million
fewer than India. In the future, more people in India will join the project,
making it the number one database in the world for similar projects. As of
April 20, India’s Uttar Pradesh had the largest number of participants,
reaching 105 million, Maharashtra ’s 91.9 million, and West Mon State’s 61.2
million.
Indian Oil Minister
Dharmendra Pradhan said that the data is scientific and very practical, and the
government plans to use it to guide the oil sector to formulate cooking gas
subsidies (Cooking Gas Subsidies).
At the same time, the Indian government is
collecting bank account numbers, biometric data and mobile phone numbers, and
by combining these three aspects of information, more targeted subsidies are
available.