The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority of India (PFRDA) launched an Aadhaar card based e-KYC that enables individuals to open an Atal Pension Yojana (APY) online. Individuals can open an Atal Pension Yojana from the comfort of their home by verifying particulars with the Aadhaar card based e-KYC course online.

Up until now, opening an APY account meant visiting a financial institution’s department to get the work done. But with the new alternative, individuals can even subscribe to an APY through Net banking and other digital modes thanks to APY service providers.

According to the PFRDA round, the information gathered from potential subscribers through the e KYC expertise framework, such as Aadhaar particulars, demographic data, pension quantity, mode of payment, and so on., will be shared with the respective banks where the subscribers' financial savings checking account is maintained through online data trade for the purpose of establishing auto debit for the desired quantity/mode. Following the opening of an APY account, the corresponding APY-SP could provide the following services to subscribers.

Furthermore, all APY accounts must be seeded with Aadhaar numbers, for which the CRA will likely provide a service in exchange for supporting the Aadhaar seeding of current APY subscribers through the appropriate permission method. APY-SPs can also collect Aadhaar information from their connected subscribers with their approval, which can then be shared with the CRA for seeding.

According to the PFRDA round, CRA should communicate with all APY-SPs for system-level integration in order to provide the performance viz. KYC-based APY onboarding and consent framework for Aadhaar seeding as soon as possible.

Also last year PFRDA enabled APY Points of Presence (PoPs) to bring in another channel for online onboarding of individuals’ existing savings account customers through the bank's very own web portal.

At that time, only certain banks were able to provide facilities of opening an APY account online through net banking or mobile apps. However, it’s vital to note that most eligible bank customers who are unable to enroll under APY do not use mobile apps or net banking facilities making it impossible for them to be able to open an APY account through online or any digital mode.

PFRDA has enabled the facility of 'Online Paperless On-boarding of Subscribers utilizing the Web Portal' to address this issue. PFRDA Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay stated that banks are critical in growing the APY subscriber base.

“CRA (Central Recordkeeping Company) may now offer digital onboarding based on Aadhaar eKYC as an alternative option to increase outreach and streamline the subscription process”, says PFRDA. Aadhaar XML, which is primarily based on boarding, has already been created for the benefit of Subscribers.