I am surprised at the pace at which the authentications are growing. So we are now doing 10 crore authentications a day. We are preparing to be 25 to 30 crore, according to him.

The number of entities using Aadhaar has crossed 600, Mishra said. He said Aadhaar’s adoption was increasingly being driven by convenience and trust, enabling identity verification at low cost and over long distances.

“For the efficiency of an economy to come up, you need collaboration. And for collaboration to happen at scale, you need trust,” Mishra said. “What Aadhaar has done is it has allowed trust to be established at a distance and at a very low cost.”

UIDAI is also pushing adoption of the Aadhaar app as part of a shift from paper-based processes to digital interactions. Downloads of the app have risen to nearly 60 million from about 50 million a few weeks ago, he said.

The app allows users to update information such as mobile numbers and addresses without visiting Aadhaar service centres.

Looking ahead, UIDAI has drawn up a technology roadmap for the next decade through an Aadhaar Vision Committee, with cybersecurity emerging as a key priority.

The authority is implementing post-quantum cryptography to prepare for future threats to existing encryption systems.

“We are going to work on, or we are implementing, post-quantum cryptography,” Mishra said, adding that current public and private key systems could face vulnerabilities within the next three to five years.

UIDAI is also deploying artificial intelligence-based fraud detection tools, including facial and fingerprint liveness testing, to counter increasingly sophisticated fraud attempts.

“It is a cat and mouse game. Basically, the fraudsters keep getting smarter, but we are also getting smarter,” he added.