BENGALURU: The Supreme Court’s decision to indefinitely push Aadhaar linking of bank accounts and telecom services is a setback for mobile wallet companies such as Paytm and MobiKwik that are trying to complete mandatory KYC (know your customer) verification of their customer base.Prepaid payment issuers (PPIs) were relying heavily on the Aadhaar interface to accomplish KYC of their customer base. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday, consumers may hesitate to share biometric details with these companies, industry insiders said.This is a double whammy for payment firms that are running against time to retain their existing user base because the Reserve Bank of India’s deadline to accomplish complete KYC of their customers ended on February 28.“Timing could not be worse for this SC decision, it’s leading to all sorts of confusion,” MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh tweeted.While the central bank had allowed any government approved ID card for KYC verification, companies have been extensively using the UIDAI (Unique Identification Development Authority of India) biometric database to validate their consumers because it’s faster and cheaper. “While there are other forms of doing the KYC, paper document-based processes are inconvenient for the user and expensive for the company,” said a CEO of a payment company. “With Aadhaar, authentication of the user is digital and quick.”A senior executive of a VC firm, which has multiple investments in the fintech space, said: “Companies can do the Aadhaar-based KYC at less than may be Rs 25, but in the past if paper-based KYC had to be done it would cost as much as Rs 500.” Then there is also security risk. If paper documents are collected, they have to be manually matched against the picture and personal details submitted by the consumer, which may expose the setup to fraudsters, industry insiders said. Most wallet companies plan to go ahead with Aadhaar verification process as there has been no instruction to stop it even as they open up their systems to various physical documents such as driving licence and PAN (permanent account number) card. “We are allowed to do KYC with other government-approved documents as well and we will continue to do so,” said Sunil Kulkarni, joint MD at payment solutions firm Oxigen Services . “However, the pace at which consumers are getting their KYC done is yet to pick up and response is still slow,” he said.MobiKwik, too, has opened up other KYC modes for their users over the last few days to boost adoption. The Rs 12,000-crore prepaid payment industry is looking at a huge loss in transaction volume post February 28, as they have been finding it difficult to cajole consumers to share their personal details.Now with the top court’s decision to indefinitely extend deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar for services, times are only expected to get tougher for the mobile wallet industry.