EPFO subscribers can now use face authentication to activate UAN: Here’s how

This marks another major simplification measure announced by the of Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in the last fortnight. Last week, the EPFO had introduced two key changes — removal of requirement to upload image of cheque leaf / attested bank passbook, and doing away with the need for employer approval for seeding bank account details with UAN.

How to conduct Aadhaar-based face authentication for UAN

Under the face authentication measure, EPFO will provide service for allotment and activation of UAN for its subscribers. This would be a key step towards contactless, secure, and fully digital service delivery for crores of members, the Labour and Employment Ministry said.

Using the EPFO’s UMANG application, employees can directly generate UAN using Aadhaar-linked face authentication. Any employer can also use the same UMANG app to generate UAN using the face authentication option for any new employees. Existing members who already have a UAN but have not yet activated it can also activate their UAN using the UMANG app.

“Biometric authentication using face authentication provides a higher level of security compared to traditional methods such as demographic or OTP-based authentication. It ensures accurate and tamper-proof identity verification at the very entry point into the EPFO system. This secure verification will also pave the way for a wide range of self-service options for members, eliminating the need for employer or regional office intervention in many future services,” the Ministry said.

What is the existing process for EPFO UAN activation

As of now, UANs are mainly generated by employers by submitting data of employees (members) to EPFO. Though this data is validated using Aadhaar data, many errors were being made in other fields such as father’s name or mobile number, etc. Owing to these errors, many employees had to update their data while submitting claims or for other benefits, the Ministry said.

The Ministry said in most cases, mobile number of members was not given or wrongly mentioned by employers due to which EPFO could not contact or reach out to members if required. In some cases, the UAN was not even given to the employee by the employer, it said.

The process for UAN activation was also being made cumbersome due to the additional requirement of UAN activation through Aadhaar OTP validation on the EPFO member portal.

The EPFO had given several reminders to employers to get employees to activate their UAN using Aadhaar OTP, the Ministry said. This would have aided the Ministry in its efforts to streamline the database for direct transfers under the proposed Employment-Linked Scheme.

In the financial year 2024-25, 1.27 crore UANs were allotted by EPFO. However, only 44,68,236 UANs or 35.3 per cent were activated by the members during the financial year 2024-25.