Amazon Pay Adds Support for Biometric Authentication for UPI Payments in India

Amazon Pay will now allow users to make UPI payments and send money to other users with biometric authentication in India, the company announced on Wednesday. This means that the app will no longer require users to enter their UPI PIN to complete transactions. The US-based tech giant claims that the new feature will enhance security, thanks to fingerprint and facial verification. Earlier, if a bad actor got their hands on a user's UPI PIN, they could make payments without the victim's knowledge. However, this will no longer be the case.

Amazon Pay Now Supports Fingerprint, Face Recognition for UPI Payments

According to the company, Amazon Pay users will be able to complete UPI payments using facial and fingerprint verifications, without having to type their UPI PIN for each transaction. Amazon Pay users will be able to validate UPI payments while sending money to an individual, paying at a store, checking their account balance, and buying products from the company's e-commerce platform.

Facial and fingerprint authentication will act as a secure key, the company said. However, the new biometric authentication feature will only allow users to make transactions of up to Rs. 5,000. For higher transaction values, people will still have to use their UPI PIN.

Amazon claims that the new feature enables “faster transactions” with one-handed usage, while also improving security. The tech giant added that biometric authentication brings “seamless integration across” Send Money, Scan & Pay, and Merchant Payment.

However, Amazon Pay is not the first company to bring facial and fingerprint authentication for UPI payments in India. In October, Navi UPI announced new features for its online payments app, including biometric authentication for UPI transactions. At the time, the company claimed that it was the first to bring facial and fingerprint verification for UPI payments, eliminating the need for entering a security pin.

Later, in the same month, the Reserve Bank of India-backed National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also introduced biometric and wearable glass recognition-based authentication for UPI transactions. Samsung Wallet was also updated with the feature at October end, joining its competitors to offer the security feature.