For AEPS Transaction Face Recognition with Finger Authentication will be Mandatory Soon

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is reportedly looking at facial recognition's functionality

for financial services that require Aadhar. Vivek Raghavan, chief product manager and biometric architect at UIDAI spoke about the project which is being tested by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), during the Indian government’s RAISE 2020 Summit.

As per an August report by ET, the NPCI, with the approval of UIDAI, has already carried out a test rollout of facial recognition with four leading banks. Those who ran the pilot test are ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, RBL Bank and Fino Payments Bank, as per sources who told the publication.

The test was done on non-financial transactions in the first phase with plans for a full-scale rollout only if the results of the first-phase were satisfactory.

The facial recognition system is deemed more desirable as it will be contactless as against the current Aadhar enabled Payment System (AePS) which requires fingerprint scanning, that does not exactly follow distancing norms. Facial recognition requires a smartphone or other device running Android version 7 and above, while iris checks require a specialized machine.

In Short :

• The UIDAI is looking at bringing in facial recognition for financial services.

• A pilot project was carried out in August that included ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, RBL Bank and Fino Payments Bank.

• Facial recognition also falls in line with social distancing norms as against fingerprint scanning which is currently used.