Even as digitisation is fast taking place across the world, especially in India, after the pandemic, DigiLocker is an important platform to play a role in it. Experts said DigiLocker will help businesses store and share documents online securely with authorities, regulators, banks or other business entities.
DigiLocker, which is a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) under Digital India programme, aims at ‘digital empowerment’ of citizen by providing access to authentic digital documents to citizen’s digital document wallet. The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original physical documents.
Ashwin Chawwla, chief executive officer and founder of Escrowpay, said, “DigiLocker has so far onboarded over 14.6 crore individuals on the platform, and issued over 5.6 billion documents. DigiLocker aims to Digitally Empower citizens by providing access to authentic digital documents. DigiLocker and Aadhaar will serve as a ‘foundational identity’, from where changes in address or identity will be reflected across other platforms instantly saving time and cost. Currently, updating one’s Aadhaar does not, for example, update the address on their income tax portal registration.”
He added that DigiLocker will now be a one-stop solution of reconciliation and updating of identity and addresses to be established using Digilocker service and Aadhaar as foundational identity. The permanent account number (PAN) and Aadhaar will be used as a common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies, under the National Data Governance Policy saving so much time and making it easier for all.
“DigiLocker will help businesses towards storing and sharing documents online securely, whenever needed, with various authorities, regulators, banks and other business entities,” Chawwla said.
He added that fintech businesses have already been facilitated by Government’s digital public infrastructure including Aadhaar, PM Jan Dhan Yojana, Video KYC, India Stack and UPI and new DigiLocker ecosystem being created by Government is a step in positive direction. This will help India improve its ‘ease of doing business’ global rankings.
Amar Deo Singh, head (advisory) at Angel One, said, “India’s fintech space is divided into five segments – payments that include QR payment, bill payment and other aggregator services; lending includes buy now, pay later and lending platforms, thirdly there are digital banking platforms, insurance platforms and wealth management platforms enabling investments and AI-based advisory services.”
Singh added that to gain access to any of these financial services, people need to submit identity proofs, and it is a must for these platforms to verify the identity details submitted during the onboarding process. Over the years, Fintech platforms have simplified the KYC process to enhance customer experience. However, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement during the Union Budget 2023-24 to provide Fintech platforms access to documents in DigiLocker to authenticate users is a game-changer.
“Aligned with its Digital India mission, the Indian government has facilitated the growth of Fintech in the country by providing access to other digital public infrastructure like Aadhaar, PM Jan Dhan Yojana, Video KYC, UPI, etc. As a result, the Indian fintech industry is predicted to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2025,” he added.
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