Many (all?) Indian banks have to offer a no-frills zero-balance bank account by law. Since many banks are government owned, it’s quite easy for such banks to of

Many (all?) Indian banks have to offer a no-frills zero-balance bank account by law. Since many banks are government owned, it’s quite easy for such banks to offer these accounts. A lot of welfare schemes directly transfer the money to the recipients’ bank accounts. I suspect this will, too. To prevent welfare fraud, many bank accounts have been linked with a biometric database called “Aadhar”. In fact I believe all Indian residents need to have registered their biometrics to operate a bank account (as you can imagine, people who don’t receive welfare aren’t huge fans of this rather invasive approach).