DCB Bank will soon let customers carry out transactions, including opening bank accounts across all its branches using iris scan for Aadhaar authentication. The bank ran a pilot programme at around 10 branches in rural or semiurban branches over the past three weeks, processing about 200 accounts, including opening 100 fresh accounts.“More than 100-crore Indians have Aadhaar. Many customers complain about not receiving the debit cards or PIN. We already have an ATM which does not require debit card or PIN, and can operate with only the person's Aadhaar number. In addition to fingerprint, you can also use iris scan to authenticate a person with Aadhaar,“ Murali M Natrajan, DCB Bank CEO told ET.The process is simple. For opening an account, a customer only has to share their Aadhaar number, and using an iris scan-enabled phablet, like the one provided by Samsung, the bank will scan their iris. A bank representative points the camera directly at the person's eyes for about three to five seconds, and the Aadhaar details are retrieved from the Aadhaar database.“Immediately we can see if the photograph matches with the customer, and address etc, which means that eKYC is done on the spot,“ said Natrajan. DCB Bank also operates nearly 70 Aadhaar-based ATMs in the country , which it had launched last year in June in Bengaluru. The ATMs use fingerprint authentication through Aadhaar instead of ATMdebit card and PIN to dispense cash.The new bank accounts opened by DCB using iris scans during the pilot were pre-opened, which means once eKYC is done using the iris scan, the bank only takes about a day to map the customer's details to a particular account. Existing customers can also update their Aadhaar number using the iris scan. DCB will gradually roll out the feature to all of its nearly 250 branches across the country within the next six months.“We want to test it for another month or so. The devices we use for the iris scan currently cost about . 13,000 per device. We believe for us to ` roll it out completely , we need a slightly cheaper solution. Something closer to the Rs 7,000-8,000 range,“ said Natrajan.“Currently , we have trained 230 people in using the iris scan system on the devices, which will be covering roughly about 112 branches in the coming few days,“ said Narendranath Mishra, rural business specialist at DCB Bank.ET had earlier reported that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had asked smartphone manufacturers to consider making their phones Aadhaar-enabled so that people can authenticate their Aadhaar biometrics on the phone itself to avail the various services.