Telecom firms moot e-KYC in place of Aadhaar

With the Supreme Court denying private entities access to Aadhaar data, telecom operators have mooted to the Department of Telecom (DoT) e-KYC data as an alternative to unique identity number-based verification.

"We are proposing minor modifications to the DoT guidelines...allowing consumer application form (CAF) to be embedded with photograph and scanned images, thereby digitising the end to end process for onboarding new subscribers by making it completely paperless," the Apex Advisory Council for Telecom in India (ACT) said in a letter to the DoT.

The apex court in its recent judgement had banned private firms, including telecom and banks, from collecting Aadhaar number.

The ACT, which has all telecom bodies as its members, has suggested an app-based customer enrolment method in which photograph of customer will be clicked by the SIM seller and embedded in the form along with self-attested copy of any identity and address proof.

The form will be then stamped by a watermark of the company along with retailer name, circle where the transaction took place, date and time so that the images cannot be re-used.

Once the consumer application form is digitally filled on the app, the retailer will make required declaration after which the seller will receive one-time password (OTP) and customer will receive OTP on his alternative number.

"OTP shall be entered and validated; upon successful OTP validation, it shall be treated as customer signature," the letter said.

On validation, the app will send consumer application form (CAF) to the system of telecom operator for verification. Upon successful verification, the number assigned to the subscriber will be ready for tele-verification.

As an additional safeguard, the system will also verify that the geotag of customer's picture and final submission of request by sale point is not more than 50 metres away, the ACT suggested.

The telecom firms will generate and send a five digit pin to an alternative number provided by the customer.

The number will be activated after customer completes tele-verification by either entering PIN number sent to him or last 4 digits of identity proof during the call, the ACT suggested.