Monday 2 November 2026Updated 06:16 IST
bharat.digital

India's digital economy, public infrastructure and security

A bharat.digital explainer

What India Stack is

Identity, payments and data: the shared digital building blocks that much of India's digital economy runs on.

India Stack is the name for a set of open APIs and digital public goods that provide three basic things at population scale: proving who you are, moving money, and sharing your data with consent. Public bodies build and run the core layers; banks, startups and government departments build products on top of them.

Identity

Aadhaar, run by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI, formed in 2009), gives residents a 12 digit number linked to biometric and demographic data. Other services can ask UIDAI to confirm that a person is who they say they are (authentication), or, with the person's permission, receive verified basic details (eKYC). UIDAI's own dashboard figures are tracked on our Numbers page. eSign, launched in 2015, lets an Aadhaar holder sign a document digitally.

Payments

The Unified Payments Interface, launched by NPCI in 2016, lets any bank account pay any other through any app. Earlier rails include the Aadhaar Payments Bridge and the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System, which NPCI uses to route government benefits into Aadhaar linked bank accounts and to allow basic banking through biometric authentication.

Data, with consent

  • DigiLocker, launched by MeitY in 2015, holds documents issued directly by the issuing authority, such as driving licences or marksheets, so they can be shared digitally instead of as photocopies.
  • Account Aggregators are RBI regulated entities that move a person's financial data, for example bank statements, from one institution to another only with that person's explicit consent. The framework went live in 2021 with a handful of banks.

Why the design matters

The common thread is that the core is public and interoperable, while products on top are competitive. A lender can verify identity through Aadhaar, receive bank statements through an Account Aggregator and pay out through UPI, without building any of those systems. The same openness raises the stakes for privacy and security, which is why the DPDP Act and sector rules from the RBI and UIDAI matter to anyone building on the stack.