Aadhaar Card As Identity Proof - Indian Banks Go Digital

Looks like the Indian Banks are going digital and now allow aadhaar card as a valid identity proof for the bank's Know Your Customer Program. We've written about Indian Government's #-Link-Snipped-# #-Link-Snipped-# several #-Link-Snipped-#. It looks like the new bank customers won't have to carry truckloads of documents as their identity proof. Your single identity card - Aadhaar will do it for you - and electronically.

The UIDAI (which is an abbreviation of Unique Identification Authority Of India) is now ready with the electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) for the banks to make use of the facility and expedite the identification process for new account customers. The system will take your finger prints along with other biometric data and your 12 digit aadhaar number and then verify it with the central server. The whole process is expected to take not more than just a few seconds. RBI will clearly instruct the banks to allow Aadhaar identification.

Do you think that's a good move? I continue to wonder why India needed another 'identification' system when there were 'passports' which more or less have had the same unique identification system for years. It'd have been more economical if the Government just spent some money in digitising those.