EPFO’s New Facial Authentication Rule For UAN: What It Means For Employees

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has made Aadhaar-based face authentication mandatory for generating new Universal Account Numbers (UANs) starting from Aug. 1. In a circular dated July 30, the EPFO directed its field officers to carry out the generation of new UANs only through Aadhaar-based Face Authentication Technology (FAT). The new subscribers of the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) scheme can generate the UAN using Aadhaar-based FAT via the UMANG App.

The move of the EPFO is aimed at a more authentic and error-free generation of UAN.

The Universal Account Number is an important 12-digit unique identification code assigned to each employee enrolled under the EPF scheme. Without it, the EPF subscribers can face problems like accessing their PF balance and submitting claims for advance withdrawals, among others.

The EPFO issued a circular in April introducing the Aadhaar-based face authentication for the new UAN generation.

According to the new rules, only the UAN generation process for new employees needs to be completed through the Aadhar-based face authentication. The existing employer-based UAN process will continue as usual for exceptional cases like international workers and citizens of Nepal and Bhutan.

This means that UAN generation through employers will still be allowed in specific cases, but for the majority of employees, using Aadhaar-based FAT is now a mandatory requirement. New employees should also note that this process has to be executed through the UMANG app.

The UMANG app is a unified platform that provides access to a wide range of government services to all users. These services include many social welfare schemes of both the central and state governments.

The new face authentication requirement is likely to cause problems for staffing firms offering manpower solutions to multinational companies. In a recent presentation to the EPFO, the Indian Staffing Federation (ISF) has highlighted that the revised policy may cause issues for workers, as many of them don’t have their mobile numbers linked to their Aadhaar. This can create difficulties in generating UANs through face authentication, according to an Indian Express report.

The federation, which represents 1.8 million contract workers employed across 135 companies, also said that users’ unfamiliarity with the new system and potential inconsistencies across phone models and camera settings during authentication can lead to problems.