An exercise was undertaken to make the smartphone a universal authenticator

New Delhi: Only your smartphone can be a universal authenticator for you. At present there are different types of documents including PAN card, Aadhar card, election card, driving license, passport for the authenticity of a person. With all this, the government has now embarked on an exercise to make smartphones universal authenticators. The exercise is being conducted by UIDAI, the issuer of Aadhaar.

India currently has 120 crore mobile connections and 800 million smartphones. It will not be a surprise if the number of smartphones in India exceeds one hundred crore in the near future. With this in mind, UIDAI has started work on establishing the smartphone as a Universal Authenticator.

UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg has confirmed this. Iris, OTP and fingerprints are also currently used for this type of standardization. Authorities now want to add one more method.

Garg said this is an ongoing process. Authorities are expected to speed up the process. This will allow people to authenticate from home.

He spoke about the importance of privacy and data security by UIDAI, saying that the Aadhaar number is on the path to becoming a single identity and is available everywhere for authentication. He said that direct benefit transfer based on Aadhaar number has directly helped the government to save Rs 2 lakh crore. As a result, both leakage and duplication have been stopped. Apart from banking, telecom industry also uses Aadhaar card for KYC. About 70 crore connections are connected by unique identification number. Also, the full KYC costs barely three rupees as UIDAI also reduces the full standardization fee. While a simple yes or no costs barely 50 paise.