Industry Odisha Bureau, Sep 10: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Wednesday launched the Aadhaar Face Authentication SDK and Sandbox at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, a move aimed at helping banks, fintechs and government departments integrate Face Authentication directly into their own mobile applications.
The SDK embeds UIDAI’s Face Authentication capability natively within Android and iOS apps, doing away with the earlier requirement of switching to a separate application — the Aadhaar FaceRD app — to complete verification. Users will now be able to complete Aadhaar-based authentication within a single app, whether for banking, insurance or broking services, shortening the onboarding journey considerably.
The ready-to-use kit comes built in with AI/ML-based liveness detection and anti-spoofing safeguards, along with encrypted handling of authentication data, and has been designed to function across a wide range of consumer smartphones.
Alongside the SDK, UIDAI introduced the Face Authentication Sandbox, a controlled test environment where organisations can validate the entire authentication journey — from user consent and face capture to liveness checks and error handling — without needing external biometric hardware. The sandbox also allows testing against failure scenarios such as invalid digital signatures, network disruptions and spoofing attempts, before services go live.
UIDAI said the launch responds to a long-pending request from the banking and fintech sector for a more seamless onboarding experience. The Authority’s Face Authentication technology, first introduced in 2021, has since processed over 500 crore transactions and is now used by close to 200 entities, including central and state government bodies, banks, NBFCs, telecom operators, brokerages and certifying authorities. The system won the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration in 2023 under the Innovation category.
The technology currently underpins several large-scale services, including the Jeevan Pramaan digital life certificate for pensioners, Ayushman Bharat beneficiary onboarding, Direct Benefit Transfer schemes, Aadhaar-enabled payments, SIM activation via e-KYC, and beneficiary verification for schemes such as PM e-Drive, PM Awas Yojana and PM Kisan.
UIDAI also released a “Playbook on Ease of Onboarding” to guide BFSI entities through integration with its authentication ecosystem for verifying customers, staff and business partners.
Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finance Limited and Airtel Payments Bank were named early adopters, having completed proof-of-concept testing of the SDK in their applications. Motilal Oswal Financial Services and Poonawalla Fincorp were credited with playing a key role in testing and validating the Sandbox.
