State Bank of India today inked an MoU with UIDAI, thus becoming the first bank in the country to take up registration of the Unique Identification number for its customers.

SBI, through its 12,000 plus branches and 17,000 plus Customer Service Points (CSPs) of Business Correspondents (BCs), will join the UIDAI (Aadhaar) registration of its customers.

"SBI, as a registrar, will be capturing through empaneled enrollment agencies the biometric characters like finger prints, iris among others and sending the same to UIDAI for providing the unique number," the bank said in a statement today.

Speaking at the MoU signing meet, SBI Chairman, O P Bhatt said, "Whatever it will take, whatever we can, we will do it."

The bank said alignment of the process of enrollments of residents by UIDAI and the customer acquisition by SBI is expected to be an enabler in implementation of the project and achieving greater financial inclusion.

Other benefits of the UID project are improving the viability of financial inclusion programme through reduced enrollment costs, reduction of distribution channel costs for government disbursal and remittances, mobility of identity to migrant labour.