UIDAI pitches for Aadhaar-based face authentication for high-value financial transactions

New Delhi: The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) may soon allow an Aadhaar-based face authentication mechanism for high-value financial transactions, a senior UIDAI official said on Tuesday.

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"UIDAI is the foundational infrastructure. It's the only way to surely know who is who? We have the world's largest biometric database. We advocate very strongly the use of face authentication as a modality in the multi-factor assessment," Abhishek Kumar Singh, Deputy Director General at UIDAI, said during a panel discussion at the Global Fintech Fest 2025 in New Delhi.

Singh said that the NPCI is already on board with this thought process and approach and is expected to make an announcement to this effect in the coming days.

He urged other bankers also to come on board on such a mechanism, adding that it's the easiest and quickest way to actually authenticate yourself.

Noting that the authentication infrastructure and framework is tied to devices, he said one needs specialized devices to authenticate oneself, except for the OTP part if the authentication is being done through a biometric process.

According to a report three months ago, there are over 64 crore smartphones in India while the total device ecosystem is around 4 million, he said and added that the moment we talk of face authentication, your smartphone is your device and thus the device ecosystem suddenly jumps to over 640 million.

"So that's the kind of convenience that it allows anyone to do," he said.

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