Aadhaar authentications could more than double in the coming years, with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) preparing to handle 250-300 million authentications a day, compared with around 100 million currently, UIDAI Chairperson Neelkanth Mishra said.
“We are now doing 100 million authentications a day… we are preparing to go to 250 to 300 million,” Mishra said. “The number of entities has expanded. More than 600 entities now use Aadhaar,” he said, adding that the identity infrastructure was increasingly becoming a base layer for digital services.
He said the growth in Aadhaar usage was also being supported by efforts to move traditionally paper-based and physical processes online. The Aadhaar app, which enables residents to update details such as mobile numbers and addresses, has seen close to 60 million downloads, up from 50 million just a few weeks earlier, he said.
The UIDAI is also working on strengthening its technology infrastructure as authentication volumes rise. Mishra said the organisation was implementing post-quantum cryptography as part of its technology road map for the next decade, while also using artificial intelligence for fraud detection.
The authority is also working towards greater global interoperability of Aadhaar and India’s digital public infrastructure, he said.
Mishra said the objective was for Aadhaar to eventually become an infrastructure that users barely notice in the background, while continuing to provide secure and trusted identity verification at scale. He highlighted the growing potential for Aadhaar’s identity layer to support new applications, including agentic technologies, where users could delegate authentication and identity-sharing tasks to AI agents.