Aadhaar & Fingerprint Based ATM Launched by DCB Bank; No Need for Card or PIN!

Very soon you might not need to carry your Debit card or remember your PIN to withdraw cash from an ATM Machine. DCB Bank has launched Bangalore’s first Aadhaar & Fingerprint (Biometric) based ATM machine in Bangalore. Anyone can withdraw cash from this ATM without needing to have their ATM or Debit card and PIN number.

DCB Bank had, in April, piloted India’s first Aadhaar based ‘Cardless & PINless’ ATM in Mumbai. Now, after the successful pilot, Aadhaar based ATM has been launched in Bangalore by hands of Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India).

However, currently only DCB Bank customers will be able to use this facility and it has not been opened for other bank customers.

DCB plans to aggressively increase the number of such ATMs across the country – they will upgrade all their 400 plus ATM machines to provide Aadhaar based functionality within next 6 months. DCB has  201 branches across 18 states and 2 UTs in India.

DCB Bank Chairman Nasser Munjee said, “Bengaluru is an important centre for us…. These ATMs are testimony to our commitment to invest in customer facing technology and promote a new way of banking,”

Will Other Banks Follow?

The important question is whether other leading private banks and PSU banks follow this route? While none of the banks have made any official announcements as yet – it is expected that most banks will have it in their pipeline.

The positive thing is that crores of citizens are linking their Aadhaar card with their bank accounts for direct benefit transfers. Although Government has not made it mandatory for citizens to link Aadhaar card with Banks, various DBT schemes launched by Government are ensuring that citizens do it on their own accord.

Also, Banks are pushing their customers to use Aadhaar as their primary know-your-customer (KYC) document, without making it mandatory. All these steps are make sure that majority of customers have their cards linked.

On the other hand, Aadhaar based ATMs have potential to reduce lot of problems that banks face. Aadhaar and biometric based authentication will definitely increase the transactions as customers will not need to have their ATM/Debut cards along with them. Also, many customers forget their PIN numbers quite often, leading to hassle to customers as well as bank as they need to keep re-issuing it again and again.

We will have to wait and see how soon other Banks jump the gun, but it won’t be long before we will see it happening! In our view new age payments banks like Paytm may do it much faster than others!