What is India Stack?

Aug. 1, 2023

Recently, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) of Papua New Guinea signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for sharing India Stack.

About India Stack:

  • It is a set of Application Programming Interface (APIs) that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise a unique digital Infrastructure.
  • India Stack consists of three layers of open APIs: identity, payments, and data.
  • Although the name of this project bears the word India, the vision of India Stack is not limited to one country.
  • It can be applied to any nation, be it a developed one or an emerging one.
  • The four distinct technology layers provided are
    • Presenceless layer: Where a universal biometric digital identity allows people to participate in any service from anywhere in the country.
    • Paperless layer: Where digital records move with an individual's digital identity, eliminating the need for massive amount of paper collection and storage.
    • Cashless layer: Where a single interface to all the country's bank accounts and wallets to democratize payments.
    • Consent layer: Which allows data to move freely and securely to democratize the market for data?
  • Some of the APIs that are a central part of India Stack: Aadhaar Proof, Aadhaar e-KYC, e-Sign, Digital Locker, Unified Payment Interface
  • The Open API team at iSPIRT has been a pro-bono partner in the development, evolution, and evangelisation of these APIs and systems.

What is API?

  • In the context of APIs, the word Application refers to any software with a distinct function.
  • Interface can be thought of as a contract of service between two applications.
  • This contract defines how the two communicate with each other using requests and responses.
  • Their API documentation contains information on how developers are to structure those requests and responses.

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