New Delhi, April 9 The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on Wednesday said its members can now generate a Universal Account Number (UAN) and activate it using Aadhaar Face Authentication Technology (FAT) through the UMANG mobile app.
The contactless and secure service marks a major leap in providing hassle-free and fully digital experiences to crores of EPFO members.
Earlier, UANs were largely generated by employers using employee data submitted to the EPFO.
While Aadhaar details were validated, inaccuracies in fields such as father’s name, mobile number, or date of birth were common, according to the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
These errors often required corrections during claim processing or while accessing other EPFO services.
In the financial year 2024-25 alone, out of 1.26 crore UANs allotted, only 44.68 lakh (35.30 per cent) were activated by members.
"Several reminders were given to employers to get employees to activate their UAN using Aadhaar OTP so that in future any benefit under the Employment Linked Scheme could be potentially provided using direct benefit transfer (DBT)," according to the EPFO.
In many cases, the UAN was not even communicated to the employee, and mobile numbers were missing or incorrect, making direct communication difficult. Furthermore, UAN activation through Aadhaar OTP validation on the EPFO Member portal was a separate process to be completed by the member, causing confusion.
To address these challenges, the EPFO has now enabled direct UAN generation and activation using Face Authentication via the UMANG App.
This service can be used by both employees and employers. It offers 100 per cent validation of Aadhaar and user using Face Authentication and data of user is pre-populated directly from Aadhaar database.
According to the EPFO, the mobile number of the user is matched with the mobile registered with Aadhaar, and UAN activation on EPFO portal simultaneously completed during generation process.
At the time of employment, an employee can hand copy of the e-UAN card PDF and UAN to the employer for onboarding with the EPFO. Access to EPFO services such as passbook viewing, KYC updates, claim submission, and more is immediately unlocked.
Last week, the government announced two key reforms in the EPFO claim settlement process. The EPFO dispensed with the requirement of uploading an image of a cheque leaf or attested bank passbook while filing online claims, which would benefit over 7.7 crore members.
The EPFO also removed the requirement of employer approval after bank verification.
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