With less than two months left to meet the deadline set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for banks to roll out Aadhaar-enabled point-of-sales (PoS) terminals, industry experts say the capacity to produce such machines falls short of demand.
According to Livemint, on 29 September, RBI had issued a circular stating that Aadhaar-enabled PoS terminals and ATMs were to be mandatorily installed by January of 2017. The deadline was extended by six months to 30 June given the slow rate of deployment of infrastructure.
The building blocks to meet the mismatch between demand and supply of Aadhaar-enabled devices are still not in place, industry experts say, adding that it will still be a challenge to meet the new deadline.
According to Ramaswamy Venkatachalam, managing director, India and South Asia, FIS, a US-based banking technology-provider, the cost of software needed to process biometric-based payments is the real concern for banks.
