This photo taken on July 17, 2018 shows an Indian woman getting her fingerprints read during the registration process for Aadhaar cards (or unique identifier [UID] cards) in Amritsar. - India's top court on September 26 upheld the government's Aadhaar scheme, the world's largest biometric database, but imposed new restrictions on how the personal details of more than one billions citizens in the system can be used. (Photo by NARINDER NANU / AFP)
The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is launching a new service called “Tasdeeq” to verify the identities of elderly individuals whose fingerprints are no longer recognized by biometric scanners.
This service, initially for banking purposes, but with potential for other applications, aims to address complaints from senior citizens who have difficulty verifying their identities due to age-related changes in their fingerprints. NADRA says that the initiative “envisages alternate identity verification for above 60 citizens.
At the launch of the Tasdeeq service, NADRA Chairman Muhammad Tariq Malik announced that the identity verification process will involve individuals answering personal questions through AI technology to bypass biometrics.
The process will ask three personal questions in two attempts. In order to successfully verify their identity and avoid biometric verification, individuals must correctly answer all three questions in at least one of the two attempts.
The initiative already has the support of five banks including MCB, Allied Bank, Bank Al Falah, Bank of Khyber, and Soneri Bank, and other banks such as National Bank, Askari Bank, First Women Bank Limited, and Khushali Bank are undergoing final tests.
It is uncertain when other banks will officially adopt the Tasdeeq service or when it will be expanded to other industries beyond banking.
The facility was created in response to difficulties collecting fingerprint biometrics from elderly individuals and laborers in Pakistan during the distribution of emergency benefits in 2020.
The service is one of several recent developments from NADRA, which recently provided 17,600 tablets to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics for a digital census initiative and introduced a new biometric patient ID verification system to increase transparency in organ collection and transplantation in hospitals.
