UIDAI Working To Take Aadhaar Global: CEO Saurabh Vijay

The Unique Identification Authority of India is working on plans to take Aadhaar global, especially to enable non-resident Indians and overseas citizens of India to benefit from the digital identification technology, a senior official of the digital identity organisation said on Thursday.

During a fireside chat at Global Fintech Fest 2026, UIDAI CEO Saurabh Vijay said his ambition is to make the Aadhaar infrastructure best-in-class to facilitate the platform's global expansion.

"I think for Aadhaar, the focus now is making Aadhaar international. We really want to work on the interoperability part of it -- how to make it more possible. So already some PoCs (proof of concept) are happening.

"Our legal framework is also going (in that direction) to make Aadhaar international. We are working on policies to make it (available) for overseas citizens of India (OCIs) so that it brings in more investment," he said.

Vijay said the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launched three products at the event and some of them may become international.

UIDAI works closely with NPCI for authenticating financial transactions.

Vijay said that UIDAI is working on guidelines to facilitate small merchants carrying out Aadhaar-enabled authentication for the KYC (know your customer) process.

He said digital KYC using Aadhaar authentication has helped ease customer onboarding, and there has been a reduction in onboarding time for UIDAI partners as well.

"We are working towards reducing this whole journey and making it more seamless with new products, something like Aadhaar Lite. The guidelines will be out very soon. Already it has been a work in progress," Vijay said.