Tech5 to develop biometric payments proof of concept for NPCI

Firm plans secure and private method for authorizing UPI payments

Sep 2, 2021 | Alessandro Mascellino

Tech5 to develop biometric payments proof of concept for NPCI

The next step for Tech5 has been revealed after the company won the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) Global level ‘PayAuth Challenge’ hackathon last month.

As well as officially recognizing the biometric firm as the event’s winner, the NPCI is asking it to jointly develop a proof of concept (POC) to showcase a new secure and private method for authorizing Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payments.

“This event gives us a brilliant opportunity to partner with NPCI – an umbrella organization set up for running retail payments and settlement systems in India, operating more than 10 different payments products, connecting 1200+ banks, 200+ aggregators and apps, and a billion+ users,” said Tech5 VP for Global Sales Ameya Bhagwat.

Launched in February 2021 by NPCI and APIX, the PayAuth Challenge aimed at exploring the practicability of solutions using biometrics and facial recognition to provide user-friendly ways to authenticate and authorize transactions on the UPI platform.

Tech5 won the PayAuth Challenge thanks to T5-IDencode, a biometric solution for payment verification and authorization in UPI.

T5-IDencode enables users to create their own decentralized identifier in the form of a secure ‘digital container,’ then link it to a UPI ID to perform biometric authentication by using either Tech5’s face or fingerprint recognition algorithm, or both.

Winning the hackathon provides Tech5 with a prize of US$20,000, which the firm will utilize to develop the new POC solution.

“As digital payments continue to grow, digital payment systems must continually innovate, and look to improve security and user convenience without compromising on either,” commented PayAuth Challenge jury member Sanjay Jain, also CIO at CIIE.

“The participants in the challenge have shown that both are possible, and I look forward to seeing these solutions incorporated in UPI, bringing in newer users and use cases.”