PayPLUS For Aadhaar Pay Brings Digital Payments To Rural India

Mahindra Comviva, the global leader in providing mobility solutions, has announced the launch of payPLUS Aadhaar Pay, a merchant payment acceptance solution that leverages India Stack for merchant payments.

According to a report, payPLUS Aadhaar Pay was created to enable residents in rural India to make digital payments with ease. Despite the country’s effort to become a more cashless society, some areas have faced challenges. With only 13 percent of rural India connected to the internet, coupled with the low financial inclusion ROI for banks, the switch to digital payments has been a tough one anywhere outside urban cities. While an app might be available in rural areas, getting it to work in a 2G environment has been difficult.

PayPLUS Aadhaar Pay uses an Aadhaar number and linked biometric credentials to facilitate merchant onboarding and payments. It leverages India Stack APIs to allow paperless merchant onboarding with Aadhaar and eKYC, while also allowing rural customers to pay using their Aadhaar-linked bank account.

In order to process payments, the customers provide their Aadhaar number to the merchant and authorize payment through their fingerprint, which means the solution requires a biometric device that is connected to the merchant’s mobile phone for payment authentication; however, customers do not really need a phone at all.

PayPLUS Aadhaar Pay is a cloud-based offering, which empowers banks to launch a digital initiative at a low CAPEX and scale easily, and the cost of transaction is 5 percent of alternative solutions like USSD and IVR. And it also makes life easier for merchants, who no longer have to remember multiple passwords across different devices, worry about new technology hitting the market or spend hours every day checking sales across different digital platforms. PayPLUS offers a unified interface for merchants and acquiring entities to manage all instruments, channels and technologies through a single interface.

“India’s digital payment initiative has the potential to bring massive social and economic transformation by formalizing the rural economy, which will not only help to bring the financially excluded into the mainstream economy but also help in generating new jobs and opportunities,” said Srinivas Nidugondi, SVP and head of mobile financial solutions, Mahindra Comviva. “However, we believe that the success of the Digital India initiative would depend on the right ecosystem enablers being in place. We are very excited at the launch of payPLUS Aadhaar Pay because it has the potential to take the digital payments initiative to every village in India.”