The Finance Ministry has permitted  22 financial entities, including Amazon Pay (India) and Hero FinCorp, to undertake Aadhaar-based authentication of clients.

The Finance ministry, through a notification, said these 22 entities, which are already reporting entities under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), will be able to verify the identity of clients and beneficial owners' details using their Aadhaar numbers.

These 22 financial companies include Godrej Finance, Amazon Pay (India) Pvt Ltd, Aditya Birla Housing Finance, Tata Motors Finance Solution, IIFL Finance and Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd. Nangia Andersen LLP Partner Sandeep Jhunjhunwala said that while Aadhaar authentication of clients is made available as one of the modes of verification for banking companies, the PMLA act  provides that Aadhaar authentication can also be adopted by reporting entities other than banking companies as may be notified by the central government.

"Accordingly, the CG has notified a list of 22 financial institutions/intermediaries, which are permitted to use Aadhaar authentication to verify the identity of clients/ beneficial owners," Jhunjhunwala said. The other modes of verification prescribed under the Money Laundering Act include offline verification under the Aadhaar Act, use of a passport and any other officially valid document or modes of identification as may be notified by the central government, and the client has a voluntary choice to opt for the mode of verification.

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