New Delhi: Walking the talk on introducing digital-friendly measures for the benefit of pensioners across the nation, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has developed a process through which pensioners with an Aadhaar number and bank account can subscribe for Atal Pension Yojana (APY) through the eNPS (national pension system) platform.
Till now, APY was available for subscription through banks, business correspondents and through Internet banking.
“Any person in the age group of 18 to 40 years with a savings bank account and Aadhaar can register for APY by providing the minimum information in the APY@eNPS portal as rest of the information will be auto populated from the respective bank,” the finance ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Under this channel, a complete end-to-end digital environment for subscription is enabled without the customer having to visit a bank or post office, added the statement.
Any eligible Indian citizen can enroll through the APY@eNPS channel by visiting www.enps.nsdl.com.APY is a social security scheme available for all citizens of India in the age group of 18-40 years. It was launched by the Prime Minister on 9 May, 2015, became operational from 1 June, 2015 and is targeted at the unorganised sector.
The move comes at a time when the Narendra Modi government is promoting the Digital India initiative and has set a target of 25 billion digital payments by the end of this fiscal.
The new feature aims to have a wider reach by eliminating the need for visiting bank branch or paper-based registration. It doesn’t require an Internet banking ID either.
While Punjab National Bank is the first bank to operationalize APY@eNPS, other banks are expected to launch the platform soon. This new feature not only makes it easy for the subscriber to join the APY but also reduces the workload for the banks/postal branches which are implementing the APY, the government said.
In June, the government had mandated Aadhaar number for availing the benefits under APY. It said any individual who is eligible to receive benefits under the APY will have to furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number or undergo enrolment under Aadhaar authentication.
“It is useful for banks as it brings more transparency and eliminates all manual transactions,” said Suresh Sadagopan, founder of Ladder7 Financial Advisories, a financial planning firm.
The unorganized sector (APY) has asset under management of less than 1%. At the end of August, NPS had a corpus of Rs2 trillion, of which 87% was contributed by government employees, according to the NPS portal.