UIDAI to introduce facial authentication for Aadhaar

The Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI) on Monday decided to introduce facial authentication for Aadhaar for people facing issues with other forms of biometric verification like fingerprint and iris scanning.

"@UIDAI introduces yet another landmark technology for authentication - Face Authentication. #AadhaarFaceAuth will help all elderly or others facing issues with fingerprint authentication. Service to be launched by 1 July 2018", Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI tweeted.

The UIDAI said the new feature will be allowed only when combined with "one more authentication factor", like fingerprint, iris or OTP.

"This facility is going to help in inclusive authentication of those who are not able to biometrically authenticate due to their worn out fingerprints, old age or hard work conditions," UIDAI said.

The camera, said the Aadhaar authority, is now available across laptops and mobiles, which made face capture feasible without any additional hardware.

Last week, the UIDAI announced a new move to secure Aadhaar, in which a randomly-generated 16-digit temporary number can be shared instead of the biometric ID.