Over 6.6 lakh pensioners used facial recognition tech for life certificates

Overall, around 60 lakh digital life certificates were received from the pensioners during the financial year 2023-24, it said. EPFO has more than 78 lakh pensioners, who are required to submit a life certificate every year for continuation of the pension being paid to them.

Earlier they had to go to banks to submit physical life certificates. The EPFO introduced digital life certificate (DLC) for its pensioners in 2015 and DLCs based on biometric authentication are accepted from the EPS pensioners on a physical visit to the branch of any bank, post office, Common Service Centre or an EPFO office as the fingerprint/ iris capture devices are available there.

The Face Authentication Technology (FAT) was developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under which face recognition technology is used as proof of life certificate. The authentication is carried out against UIDAI’s Aadhaar database using UIDAI’s Face Recognition Ap p. EPFO adopted this technology in July 2022.

The use of facial authentication method is done through two applications — “Aadhaar Face RD” and the “Jeevan Pramaan” in their smartphones. The operator authentication for these applications are carried out through Aadhaar-linked mobile numbers. Once the scan is completed in the app, the DLC submission is confirmed on the mobile screen along with the Jeevan Pramaan ID and Pension Payment Order (PPO) number.