New Delhi, May 30 (KNN) For completing Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines, banks can now accept the Aadhaar number as part of a customer’s original document for completion.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has carried out important changes in its master direction on KYC for regulated entities (REs), including allowing banks to carry out Aadhaar authentication/offline verification of an individual who voluntarily uses his Aadhaar number for identification purpose, and adding ‘proof of possession of Aadhaar number’ to the list of Officially Valid Documents (OVD).

The changes by the RBI comes in the wake of the government notifying amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005, in February.

For existing bank account holders, PAN or Form No 60 is to be submitted within such timelines as may be notified by the government, failing which the account shall be subject to temporary ceasing till PAN or Form No 60 is submitted.

“However, before temporarily ceasing operations for an account, the RE shall give the customer an accessible notice and a reasonable opportunity to be heard,” the RBI said.

RBI said “The use of Aadhaar, proof of possession of Aadhaar etc., shall be in accordance with the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies Benefits and Services) Act, the Aadhaar and Other Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019 and the regulations made thereunder.”

For customer identification of individuals, who are non-Direct Benefit Transfer beneficiary customers, the REs should obtain a certified copy of any OVD containing details of his identity and address along with one recent photograph, it added.

Listing out details of how the authentication can be done, the regulator said that for those customers who do not intend to avail of direct benefit transfer, or subsidies, from the government, the bank should not store their Aadhaar numbers or redact the numbers they already have.