By Vivek Pai on Sep 18th, 2014
Payment solutions provide Oxigen Services India has tied-up with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to launch eKYC service to the market.
The company claims to be the first non-bank to launch eKYC services, however it’s worth noting that NPCI website currently lists three non-bank entities including Oxigen as members. Others members include LIC India and Reliance General Insurance Company.
Remember that RBI had allowed Non Banking Financial Companies (NBFC) to accept e-KYC verification as a valid identification process in August this year. This enabled NBFCs to accept e-Aadhaar cards via the UIDAI website as a form of authentication.
Oxigen mentions that customers can sign up for the service by providing their Aadhaar card number and swiping their finger at a biometric scanner at select Oxigen outlets that are connected to its point of sale terminals or PCs. Following this, Oxigen verifies the customer’s Aadhaar number and their biometric information with Aadhaar data base.
After verification and consumer’s consent, the KYC details such as customer’s name, date of birth, photograph and address are stored in the Oxigen Mobile Wallet system as a valid KYC. Oxigen mentions that it will extend this facility to all of its 150,000 touch points soon.
Oxigen mentions that this service will enable customers to make use of Oxigen mobile wallet to carry out transactions of up to Rs 50,000 per transaction for goods and services, transfer upto Rs 25,000 to any bank account per month via Instant money transfer and allows multiple refills of its mobile wallet with up to Rs 50,000 per refill.
OxiCash Money Transfer: It’s worth noting that Oxigen had previously partnered NPCI to launch a non-banking instant money transfer service called OxiCash Money Transfer. The company had then mentioned that this service will allow users to transfer money to any bank account and receive money from any bank to its wallet. These transfers were done through Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS).
Axis Bank- Visa eKYC tie-up: In October last year, Axis Bank had partnered with Visa to launch the first ‘eKYC’ facility in the country. Following this, any with an Aadhaar card could open bank account within minutes by using their biometric data. Axis Bank had then mentioned that facility is currently available in 1,000 Axis Bank branches across 400 centres and it plans to extend the eKYC facility to over 2,000 branches across India by end of October 2013.
Earlier this year, RBI had also started piloting a cash out facility with biometric authentication for mobile wallet services. Calpian-backed Money on Mobile was one of the services selected for this pilot. Money on Mobile was looking to roll out this pilot in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Surat through 52 existing retail partner locations.