Aadhaar Payment Bridge System – The heart of GOI’s DCT.

            The APBS was conceptualized by NPCI in the mid 2011, with Reserve Bank of India, according permission to launch it in October 2011. Bank of India was the first bank to go live on APBS, followed by ICICI Bank and Union Bank of India.

            The testing field was the state of Jharkhand.

APBS was built around the Aadhaar Numbers being issued by UIDAI. The Aadhaar number is the common link between the Government Departments and the beneficiary.

The core idea of APBS is to ensure that the Aadhaar number holder receives his/her funds from the Government in the respective bank account. The Aadhaar number holder need not inform all the government departments in case of the change of his bank account number.

The mapping between the bank account number and the Aadhaar number would be via the ‘Mapper Module’, built in APBS.   

In the long run, this approach would result in a) minimal transaction cost b) reduced TAT c) minimal customer complaints d) minimal recon issues.

The present process flow is as follows: -

01) The government departments submit the transaction files to NPCI via their Sponsor Bank between 10.30am to 12.30pm.

02)Around 2.00pm, NPCI switches the transactions to the recipient banks, to the banks as mapped on the Aadhaar Mapper which is a part of APBS.

03)By 3.00pm the beneficiary banks would have passed on the credits to the respective beneficiary account holders.

04)By 5.00pm, the beneficiary banks intimate NPCI the status of the individual transactions i.e successful or rejected.

05)By 7.00pm, NPCI updates the statuses to the Sponsor Banks.

All the above happens on the same day. Initially there is only one payment cycle. Yes, the APBS can handle multiple payment cycle, it is up to the sponsor banks and the government departments to demand more payment cycle, in case of surge in the volumes.