By Akanimo Sampson
United Arab Emirate (UAE) has announced plans to employ biometric face recognition (Facial ID) to register customers in the ‘UAE Pass’ application.
The move is part of its endeavour to launch the first safe digital national ID for citizens and residents.
The UAE Pass app is the first national digital identity and signature solution that enables users to identify themselves to government service providers in all emirates through a smart-phone-based authentication.
The application is designed to enable users to sign documents digitally with a high level of security. It is part of UAE’s initiatives to accelerate digital transformation and eliminate paper transactions.
Facial ID is a smart technology that the government aims to employ in various sectors, to benefit from its advantages and enhance public and private sector services.
To date, over 1.38 million people are registered on the UAE Pass app.
Head of the UAE Digital Government and Director-General of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, says “the use of facial recognition technology in the registration process of the Digital ID app is a key step towards the implementation of emerging technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI), to establish a digital lifestyle in the UAE.”
With the use of biometric facial recognition in the Digital ID application, a verified account may be created in less than five minutes without the need to visit government services centres.
The registration process use to take 20 minutes and registrants had to visit government services centres.
The application enables customers to safely enter all government and quasi-governmental websites and applications and benefit from over 6,000 services provided by over 130 government, quasi-governmental, federal and local authorities.
