India has reportedly abandoned its plans to require smartphone makers to include the country’s biometric ID app on their devices.
This move came in the face of opposition from companies such as Apple and Samsung, according to Reuters I mentioned Friday (April 17).
UIDAI (Unique Identity Authority of India), the government body that runs the Aadhaar app, asked India’s IT Ministry in January to convince the tech giants to pre-install the service.
As Reuters pointed out, Aadhaar is a unique 12-digit identification number linked to a person’s fingerprints and Iris scanningNearly 1.34 billion residents use it for checking into banking and telecommunications services, as well as for faster entry at airports.
UIDAI said in a statement to Reuters on Friday that India’s Ministry of Information Technology has studied the proposal and “does not support mandating pre-installation of the Aadhaar app on smartphones.”
The ministry held “consultations with stakeholders from the electronics industry” before deciding to drop the idea of preloading Aadhaar, the statement added.
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According to documents reviewed by Reuters, smartphone companies were uneasy about this Device security and compatibility related to the Aadhaar proposal, while also expressing concerns about the high cost of manufacturing a separate line of devices just for India.
This news comes on the heels of reports from last year that India was introducing biometric authentication to its national domestic payments network United Payments Interface (UPI).
Under this system, UPI users can approve payments through facial and fingerprint recognition, and authentication will be done using Biometric data stored on Aadhaar.
PYMNTS has cataloged the popularity of biometric authentication in other parts of the world. For example, research from 2025 “Global Digital Shopping Index: UAE Edition” It found that 32% of UAE shoppers used biometric authentication such as fingerprint or facial recognition technology to complete their most recent online transaction.
This number is nearly double the global average of 18.5% and represents the second highest level of all the countries surveyed by PYMNTS Intelligence.
“This high adoption rate underscores strong consumer preference for convenient and secure ways to verify purchases,” PYMNTS wrote last summer.
“For financial institutions and payment processing companies, this signals a clear imperative: support and reinforcement Biometric payment solutions It is no longer a niche offering but has become a mainstream expectation among consumers in the UAE.
