UIDAI introduces Fingerprint ‘Liveliness’ to curb fraud

Context

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) recently introduced a new security feature to the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS).

About the new feature

• The security feature is called fingerprint ‘liveliness’ and is expected to help prevent using fake fingerprints to withdraw money through AEPS.
• The new feature has been pushed to AEPS point of sale (PoS) machines via a software upgrade. 

What is Aeps?

• AePS (Aadhaar Enabled Payment System), developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), allows people to carry out financial transactions like withdrawing cash from their bank accounts, generating a mini statement, and making a balance enquiry with just their Aadhaar. 
• It has enabled much simpler and more secure payment processes through mobile and internet banking using Aadhaar.
• The service is interoperable, which means that any customer with an Aadhaar can use any AePS service provider to transact.

About National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)

• National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an umbrella organization for all retail payments systems in India. 
• It was set up with the guidance and support of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA). 
• It was incorporated as a Section 25 company under Companies Act 1956(now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013) and is aimed to operate for the benefit of all the member banks and their customers.
• Founded in 2008.
• It has successfully played a pioneering role in development of a domestic card payment network called RuPay, reducing the dependency on international card schemes.