UIDAI Launches Aadhaar Face Authentication SDK, Sandbox at GFF 2026

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Wednesday launched the Aadhaar Face Authentication SDK (Software Development Kit) and Aadhaar Face Authentication Sandbox at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, enabling ecosystem partners to integrate, test and deploy the authentication feature more seamlessly within their digital applications. The Aadhaar Face Authentication SDK brings the UIDAI’s Face Authentication capability directly into native Android and iOS applications.

It eliminates the need for users to switch between applications, enabling a smoother, single-app authentication experience. The ready-to-use SDK simplifies integration for ecosystem partners while incorporating AI/ML-based liveness and anti-spoofing capabilities. It also supports secure handling and encryption of authentication data and is designed to work across consumer smartphones.

The SDK is expected to help government departments, banks, fintechs and other organisations deploy Face Authentication-enabled services more efficiently. Alongside the SDK, the UIDAI also launched the Aadhaar Face Authentication Sandbox, a secure and controlled environment that allows organisations to integrate, test, and validate the complete Face Authentication journey before production onboarding.

The Sandbox enables developers and quality assurance teams to test key stages, including user provisioning and consent, face capture, liveness checks, authentication, error handling, and response validation-- without requiring external biometric hardware. It also allows testing of failure scenarios such as invalid digital signatures, network interruptions, timeouts and spoofing attempts.

The launch of the SDK and Sandbox fulfils a long-standing demand of the fintech and banking ecosystem to build a seamless and secure user onboarding journey from within the user's bank and fintech organisation’s mobile application. It simplifies the journey. The user, whether a banking, insurance, or broking app, downloads only one app, and does Aadhaar authentication from within the app. Earlier, for a similar experience, a background app called the FaceRD app was needed. This made the user onboarding journey longer and dependent on the presence of the Aadhaar FaceRD app.

With this launch, it reduces the need for multiple apps for Aadhaar Face Authentication The UIDAI’s indigenously engineered AI/ML-driven Face Authentication solution, which was launched in 2021, has processed over 500 crore transactions and has been adopted by nearly 200 entities, including Union government ministries and departments, state governments, banks, NBFCs, telecom operators, brokerage firms and certifying authorities, among others.

The technology received the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration 2023 under the Innovation category. Face Authentication is widely used across services like submission of Digital Life Certificate (Jeevan Pramaan) by pensioners, Ayushman Bharat beneficiary onboarding, DBT schemes, Aadhaar-enabled payments, SIM activation through e-KYC, beneficiary authentication for schemes like PM e-Drive, PM Awas Yojana and PM Kisan, etc. The UIDAI also unveiled a “Playbook on ease of Onboarding” which will work as a guide for BFSI entities to get onboarded in the UIDAI authentication ecosystem for ID verification of its customers, staff, and other business partners.

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