Unique ID spinoffs for banks, IT

The immediate opportunity here is for the IT companies, most of whom have already started gearing up to the huge demand in the country itself. With a population nearing 1.2 billion, the country would need a massive infrastructure to support CSMS. Not only the banking industry but also the post offices (which in rural India are a substitute for banks) need to gear up to meet operation requirement.
This is good news for hardware and software companies.
There are a few Indian companies like Vakrangee Software who are actually the feet-on-the-ground, best positioned to take advantage of this mapping opportunity. Among the bigger companies, TCS has taken bold steps in penetrating the Indian market.

Source: Unique ID spinoffs for banks, IT

Basic Aadhar Authentication API To Be Available For Free

Aashar API's represents one of most potential resource for Indian developer. These APi's are offered free. Here is some details. 

India’s ambitious UID project named Aadhar intends to create an ecosystem of applications and services that center around the idea of authenticating users through their UID. Nandan Nilakeni, Chairman, UIDAI plans to do this by opening up the Aadhar API to third party developers.

An API or application programming interface is a set of rules that software programs follow to communicate with each other. So the opening up of the Aadhar API means is that based on your UID number the software will be able to verify your identity. Through the API an individual’s Aadhar number is sent to the authentication server and it returns a yes or no depending on whether the identity is true or not. In addition to this, services like banks and payment gateways that require a higher level of security can also pass in biometric informationalong with the Aadhar number to ensure accurate identity. The whole communication process would be encrypted and if encryption standards aren’t matched the API pops up an error.

The yes/no API (basic API) is being provided for free by the UIDAI to encourage the growth of the ecosystem. However, the UIDAI also offers address verification and biometric verification APIs which would be chargeable. For example: opening bank accounts would require address verification and issuing a credit card may require biometric verification. The UID is rolling out gradually with villages being the main target in the initial phase. The documentation talks about how the API could be used in rural ares to give payments to people enrolled in theNational Employment guarantee scheme. Nandan Nilakeni also pointed out that the UID could also be used to verify people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The documents on the Aadhar site also talk about privacy and how the government would protect an individuals right to privacy by using the information only to authenticate users. With hackers increasingly becoming anti- government, we hope the Aadhar database servers have robust security measures in place to avoid any sort of data theft.

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