India is pushing Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital identity system, deeper into everyday private life with a new app and support for offline verification, a move that raises new questions about security, consent, and the wider use of multiple databases.

Office has partnered in late January by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) backed by the Indian government, the changes introduced a new Aadhaar app along with an offline verification framework that allows individuals to verify their identity without real-time checks against the central Aadhaar database.

The app allows users to share a limited amount of information, such as confirming that they are over a certain age rather than revealing their full date of birth, with various services, such as hotels and housing societies in workplaces, platforms, and payment devices, while the existing mAadhaar app continues to operate in parallel for now.

Along with the new app, UIDAI has also expanded Aadhaar’s footprint in mobile wallets, with upcoming integration with Google Wallet and discussions are underway to enable similar functionality in Apple Wallet, in addition to existing Samsung Wallet support.

The Indian authorities are also promoting the use of the app in policing and hospitality. The Ahmedabad City Crime Branch has become the first police unit in India to integrate Aadhaar-based offline verification with PATHIK, a guest-monitoring platform launched by the police department, aimed at hotels and guest accommodation to record guest information.

UIDAI has also launched the new Aadhaar app as a digital visiting card for meetings and networking, allowing users to share selected personal details via QR code.

Launch officials in New Delhi said these latest efforts are part of a broader effort to replace photocopies and manual ID checks with consent-based, offline verification. The approach, they argue, is intended to give users more control over what specific identity information they want to share, while enabling verification at scale without having to query the central Aadhaar database.

Early uptake on a massive scale

While UIDAI formally launched the new Aadhaar app last month, it has been in testing since as early as 2025. Estimates from Appfigures show that the app, which will appear on app stores by the end of 2025, has easily overtaken the older mAadhaar app in monthly downloads.

The combined monthly installs of Aadhaar-linked apps increased from nearly 2 million in October to nearly 9 million in December.

The new app is based on an identity system that is already working on a large scale considering the population of India. Numbers published in Public dashboard of UIDAI shows that Aadhaar has issued more than 1.4 billion identity numbers and handled nearly 2.5 billion authentication transactions every month, along with tens of billions of electronic “know your customer” checks since its launch.

The move to offline verification does not replace this infrastructure as much as it expands it, moving Aadhaar from a largely backend verification tool to a more visible and everyday interface.

At the launch of the app, UIDAI officials said the move towards offline verification was meant to address long-standing risks. associated with physical copies and screenshots of Aadhaar documentswhich are routinely collected, stored, and disseminated with minimal oversight.

The expansion comes at a time of regulatory changes, easing restrictionsand a new framework (PDF), with the UIDAI now allowing certain public and private organizations to verify Aadhaar credentials without querying the central database.

Compliance, accountability, and unresolved risks

Civil liberties and digital rights groups say the legal changes will not address the deeper structural risks of Aadhaar.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now, said the expansion of Aadhaar into offline and private-sector settings introduces new threats, especially at a time when India’s data protection framework still being put in place.

Chima questioned the timing of the rollout, arguing that the federal government should wait for India’s Data Protection Board to be established first, and allow for independent review and wider consultation with affected communities.

“The fact that it continues at this point in time seems to indicate a preference to continue expanding the use of Aadhaar, although it is not clear in terms of the additional risks that it may pose to the system, as well as to the data of Indians,” Chima told TechCrunch.

Legal advocacy groups in India also point to unresolved implementation failures.

Prasanth Sugathan, legal director of New Delhi-based digital rights group SFLC.in, said that while the UIDAI framed the app as a tool for citizen empowerment, it did little to address persistent problems, such as inaccuracies in the Aadhaar database, loss of securityand poor mechanisms for recovery, which disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.

He also cited a 2022 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, which found that the UIDAI had failed to meet certain compliance standards.

“Such issues often result in disenfranchisement of people, especially those who are meant to benefit from such systems,” Sugathan told TechCrunch, adding that it remains unclear how the data shared through the new app will prevent breaches or leaks.

Campaigners associated with Rethink Aadhaar, a civil society campaign focused on Aadhaar-related rights and accountability, argue that the offline verification system risks reinstating the private sector’s use of Aadhaar in ways that the Supreme Court has clearly prohibited.

Shruti Narayan and John Simte of the group said that making private entities always rely on Aadhaar for verification amounts to “Aadhaar creep”, normalizing its use in social and economic life despite a 2018 judgment which eliminated provisions that allowed private actors to use Aadhaar to verify people’s information. They warn that consent in such contexts is often unrealistic, especially in situations involving hotels, housing societies, or delivery workers, while India’s data protection law remains untested.

Together, the new app, regulatory changes, and ecosystem expansion are moving Aadhaar from a background identification tool to a visible layer of everyday life that is increasingly difficult to avoid. As India doubles down on Aadhaar, governments and technology companies are watching closely, lured by the promise of population identity checks.

India’s IT ministry and UIDAI CEO did not respond to requests for comments.