Aadhaar Based Facial Recognition Must for New SIM Card Registrations

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has announced that from now on, Aadhaar based face recognition will be must for all new SIM registrations. 

UIDAI had made it clear that facial recognition
based Aadhaar authentication will be rolled out in a phased manner, starting September 15th.

UIDAI has made it mandatory for new SIM registrations to be authenticated with Aadhaar’s facial recognition method.

This rule has been made mandatory for all those new SIM cards, which are issued based on Aadhaar as ID proof. Hence, we can safely say that most of new Jio SIMs would be now authenticated only with facial recognition method, as Jio SIMs use Aadhaar as one of the primary ID proof method.

UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, “This instruction (for matching live face photo with eKYC photo) will apply only where Aadhaar is used for issuance of SIMs. As per Telecom Department’s instructions, if SIM is issued through other means without Aadhaar, then these instructions will not apply,”

Starting September 15th, every new SIM card issued via Aadhaar will follow these steps for completing eKYC:

User will give his/her face photo to the authorized service provider of telecom operator

The face will matched with the face ID present in the Aadhaar

eKYC will be completed only the face ids match

In case the new SIM has been issued using any other ID, then facial match is not mandatory.