India is trying to yank its cash-based economy into the 21st century.
But how do you get 1.2 billion people, many of whom have never seen a bank or opened an account, to send digital payments to each other?
The government's answer is an effort it has named the Unified Payment Interface. Debuting Monday, it's a system designed to make transferring and receiving money as easy as exchanging e-mail or text messages.
The goal is to bring banking and financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, many of them poor and disadvantaged, in one fell swoop. The network was created by India's retail banks and backed by India's central bank—and they're confident it will work because it's built on top of an even more audacious project: India's biometrics-enabled national ID system, called Aadhaar after the Hindi word for foundation.
So far, India's attempt to assign every citizen a unique 12-digit number associated with a person's unique iris, fingerprint or facial features, is succeeding—just last week, Aadhaar reached its milestone of registering 1 billion people. With more than 80 percent of Indians enrolled, it gives the payments system a solid base to build on. Full story...
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But how do you get 1.2 billion people, many of whom have never seen a bank or opened an account, to send digital payments to each other?
The government's answer is an effort it has named the Unified Payment Interface. Debuting Monday, it's a system designed to make transferring and receiving money as easy as exchanging e-mail or text messages.
The goal is to bring banking and financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, many of them poor and disadvantaged, in one fell swoop. The network was created by India's retail banks and backed by India's central bank—and they're confident it will work because it's built on top of an even more audacious project: India's biometrics-enabled national ID system, called Aadhaar after the Hindi word for foundation.
So far, India's attempt to assign every citizen a unique 12-digit number associated with a person's unique iris, fingerprint or facial features, is succeeding—just last week, Aadhaar reached its milestone of registering 1 billion people. With more than 80 percent of Indians enrolled, it gives the payments system a solid base to build on. Full story...
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- Laxmi Das, the Indian beggar who has opened a bank account. Wow!
- Indian administrative officer has more than 220 bank accounts!!!
- Human A.T.M. teaches rural India about banking...
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