India’s payment sector advances with selfie biometrics and authentication tools

India’s payment industry continues to upgrade and introduce advancements in digital payment systems and user verification technologies, with face biometrics as an increasingly common core feature.

Cashfree Payments, Federal Bank, and PayU are among digital payment providers at the forefront, introducing products for digital transactions and user verification in the country.

Cashfree Payments achieves milestone in secure user verifications

Cashfree Payments, a player in India’s payments landscape, recently announced that the company has successfully crossed 1 billion user verifications using its Secure ID platform, the Banking & Finance Post (BFSI) reports. Secure ID is a user verification service that leverages the Aadhaar database, India’s identification authority, to validate user identities in real-time. Cashfree Payments added digital identity verification through Aadhaar integration to its suite of APIs back in 2022.

According to the company, Secure ID is designed to simplify user onboarding and reduce fraud by providing ID verification with selfie biometrics and liveness detection. The platform is already being used in sectors such as banking, fintech, and online marketplaces.

CTO Ramkumar Venkatesan tells Express Computer that Cashfree has launched a dozen ID verification products over just a few months.

Last year, Cashfree Payments introduced FlowWise, India’s first self-hosted payments orchestration platform for businesses to manage multiple payment gateways and optimize transaction routes, with the goal of enhancing the overall payment experience for their customers.

FlowWise integrates various payment methods, including UPI, net banking, wallets, and cards, all under one roof. The self-hosted approach claims to let businesses maintain control over their payment data and infrastructure, in a bid to reduce risks associated with third-party dependencies.

Federal Bank introduces facial recognition payment system

As Cashfree Payments focuses on secure verification and orchestration, the privately-owned Federal Bank recently announced the launch of “SmilePay,” a face biometrics payment system for the Indian market. SmilePay aims to allow customers to make contactless payments by smiling at a camera, with hygiene at the core of the rationale behind the payment process.

According to United News of India, SmilePay is initially being rolled out at select locations, with plans for wider adoption across various retail and service sectors. Additionally, the payment system is the first that utilizes facial authentication built on UIDAI’s Bhim Aadhaar Pay, according to the report.

SmilePay will initially be offered exclusively to Federal Bank customers, requiring both businesses and individuals to hold accounts with the bank. Federal Bank plans to broaden the service’s availability and seek strategic partnerships in the near future, BFSI reports.

PayU enhances global payments

While Cashfree Payments and Federal Bank focus on the domestic market, PayU is extending globally with the release of new systems that aim to enhance subscription-based payments and cross-border transaction security. Their subscription multiplier and cross-border issuer authentication offerings are designed to optimize recurring payments and secure international transactions, respectively. The company will initially launch both tools with Mastercard and later extend these offerings to other networks, according to reports from Press Trust of India.

The subscription multiplier aims to maximize the value of recurring payments by reducing churn and improving customer retention through “Push Provisioning” data analytics and machine learning algorithms. Meanwhile, the cross-border issuer authentication technology focuses on minimizing fraud and ensuring secure international transactions.

The initiatives by Cashfree Payments, Federal Bank, and PayU, along with the growing adoption of Aadhaar-based verification, represent a unified push towards a more secure digital payment environment in India.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric payments  |  Cashfree Payments  |  face biometrics  |  financial services  |  India  |  PayU  |  SmilePay