Amazon Pay Begins Physical KYC After SC Ruling Against Aadhaar Use By Private Companies

Following in the footsteps of e-payments company Paytm, e-commerce giant Amazon has now begun to roll out its own physical infrastructure to offer the know-your-customer (KYC) facility, along with a doorstep verification service for the same, to verify users of Amazon Pay, reports Times of India. This follows a Supreme Court ruling which has heavily restricted the use of Aadhaar by private enterprises, forcing private players to switch to a physical KYC model.

Physical verification would mean customers having to submit hard copies of documents, along with the need to verify that the documents are genuine. Previously, companies could easily sidestep the physical verification process through a fingerprint scan online using Aadhaar for KYC.

Amazon needs to ensure the expedition completion of users’ KYCs for its Amazon Pay service since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made such verification mandatory for private companies offering prepaid payment instruments, also known as e-wallets. The deadline for the same is February.

The move towards physical KYC has put smaller players in the e-payments has put a lot of strain on companies active in the space, especially smaller ones. An industry executive explained the situation, “There is not enough incentive or convenience for users to go through the KYC process. While e-KYC helped, now it looks extremely difficult to collect complete KYC data of users, with the RBI deadline ending in February.”