India is pushing Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital id system, deeper into on a regular basis non-public life via a brand new app and offline verification help, a transfer that raises new questions on safety, consent, and the broader use of the huge database.
Announced in late January by the Indian government-backed Distinctive Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the modifications introduce a brand new Aadhaar app alongside an offline verification framework that permits people to show their id with out real-time checks in opposition to the central Aadhaar database.
The app permits customers to share a restricted quantity of knowledge, similar to confirming that they’re over a sure age relatively than revealing their full date of start, with a spread of providers, like lodges and housing societies to workplaces, platforms, and cost gadgets, whereas the present mAadhaar app continues to function in parallel for now.
Alongside the brand new app, UIDAI can be increasing Aadhaar’s footprint in cellular wallets, with upcoming integration with Google Wallet and discussions underway to allow comparable performance in Apple Pockets, along with current help on Samsung Pockets.
The Indian authority can be selling the app’s use in policing and hospitality. The Ahmedabad Metropolis Crime Department has develop into the primary police unit in India to combine Aadhaar-based offline verification with PATHIK, a guest-monitoring platform launched by the police division, aimed toward lodges and visitor lodging to document guests’ data.
UIDAI has additionally positioned the brand new Aadhaar app as a digital visiting card for conferences and networking, permitting customers to share chosen private particulars by way of a QR code.
Officers on the launch in New Delhi stated these newest efforts are a part of a broader effort to interchange photocopies and guide ID checks with consent-based, offline verification. The strategy, they argued, is supposed to provide customers extra management over which particular id data they wish to share, whereas enabling verification at scale with out having to question Aadhaar’s central database.
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June 23, 2026
Early uptake on high of large scale
Whereas UIDAI formally launched the brand new Aadhaar app final month, it had been in testing since earlier in 2025. Estimates from Appfigures present that the app, which appeared in app shops towards the tip of 2025, shortly overtook the older mAadhaar app in month-to-month downloads.
Mixed month-to-month installs of Aadhaar-related apps rose from near 2 million in October to just about 9 million in December.
The brand new app is being layered onto an id system that already operates at huge scale contemplating India’s inhabitants. Figures revealed on UIDAI’s public dashboard present that Aadhaar has issued greater than 1.4 billion id numbers and handles roughly 2.5 billion authentication transactions every month, alongside tens of billions of digital “know your buyer” checks since its launch.
The shift towards offline verification doesn’t exchange this infrastructure a lot as extending it, transferring Aadhaar from a largely backend verification instrument right into a extra seen and on a regular basis interface.
On the app’s launch, UIDAI officers stated the transfer towards offline verification was supposed to handle long-standing dangers related to bodily photocopies and screenshots of Aadhaar paperwork, which have usually been collected, saved, and circulated with little oversight.
The enlargement comes at a time of regulatory modifications, easing restrictions, and a new framework (PDF), with UIDAI now permitting some private and non-private organizations to confirm Aadhaar credentials with out querying the central database.
Consent, accountability, and unresolved dangers
Civil liberties and digital rights teams say these authorized modifications don’t resolve Aadhaar’s deeper structural dangers.
Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior worldwide counsel and Asia Pacific coverage director at Entry Now, stated the enlargement of Aadhaar into offline and private-sector settings introduces new threats, notably at a time when India’s information safety framework continues to be being put in place.
Chima questioned the timing of the rollout, arguing that the federal authorities ought to have waited for India’s Information Safety Board to be established first, and permit for impartial overview and wider session with affected communities.
“The truth that this has gone forward at this level of time appears to point a desire to proceed the enlargement of the usage of Aadhaar, even whether it is unclear by way of the additional dangers that it’d pose to the system, in addition to to the info of Indians,” Chima informed TechCrunch.
Indian authorized advocacy teams additionally level to unresolved implementation failures.
Prasanth Sugathan, authorized director at New Delhi-based digital rights group SFLC.in, stated that whereas UIDAI has framed the app as a instrument for citizen empowerment, it does little to handle persistent issues, similar to inaccuracies within the Aadhaar database, safety lapses, and poor mechanisms for redress, which have disproportionately have an effect on weak populations.
He additionally cited a 2022 report by India’s Comptroller and Auditor Common, which discovered UIDAI had failed to satisfy sure compliance requirements.
“Such points can usually lead to disenfranchisement of individuals, particularly those that have been meant to be benefited by such techniques,” Sugathan informed TechCrunch, including that it stays unclear how information shared via the brand new app would forestall breaches or leaks.
Campaigners related to Rethink Aadhaar, a civil society marketing campaign centered on Aadhaar-related rights and accountability, argue that the offline verification system dangers reintroducing private-sector use of Aadhaar in methods the Supreme Courtroom has already explicitly barred.
Shruti Narayan and John Simte of the group stated enabling non-public entities to routinely depend on Aadhaar for verification quantities to “Aadhaar creep”, normalizing its use throughout social and financial life regardless of a 2018 judgment that struck down provisions permitting non-public actors to make use of Aadhaar to confirm individuals’s data. They warned that consent in such contexts is commonly illusory, notably in conditions involving lodges, housing societies, or supply staff, whereas India’s information safety legislation remains largely untested.
Collectively, the brand new app, regulatory modifications, and increasing ecosystem are shifting Aadhaar from a background id utility into a visual layer of day by day life that’s more and more arduous to keep away from. As India doubles down on Aadhaar, governments and tech firms are watching carefully, attracted by the promise of population-scale id checks.
The Indian IT ministry and UIDAI CEO didn’t reply to requests for feedback.
