Singapore will use face recognition technology in national digital identity authentication system

At the recent stack summit, the Singapore Government’s Ministry of Science and Technology revealed that they would create a centralized biometric system, As part of the national digital identification system (NDI), the construction of the system starts with facial recognition, after the system is completed, it can provide services for municipal services and business operations.
In the future, Singapore citizens only need to register the biometric information under the NDI system, and there is no need to repeat the registration process for each service.

NDI is a way to authenticate users online. As part of the push to get NDI on the ground, the ministry of science and technology will launch the SingPass mobile app by the end of this month, replacing the previous 2FA model, through which citizens can scan their fingerprints to access electronic municipal services – a mechanism more secure than passwords.



This way you can avoid being easily guessed when using a password or compromised when sharing a password.

STACK 2018 is the first meeting of the Singapore Ministry of Science and Technology for operators and technicians of state and private companies. During the two-day event, attendees can learn about how Singapore’s technology platform works and get opportunities to participate in development.

The government is providing NDI “software development kits and plugins” to different industries, including banking and finance, so that enterprises can connect their business and biometric platforms.




Users can verify a biometric, such as a fingerprint, sound or face, and the system will automatically verify the user’s identity. This means that the process is “user-driven”, NDI Senior director Quek Sin Kwok stressed. In the past few years, biometric systems have been tested at Changi Airport and in a number of public places. Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said Singapore wanted to replicate the success of the digital ID system in Estonia, which the Government hoped would be used to support electronic payments.

National digital identity will be distributed free of charge to 5.6 million Singaporean citizens, expected to be put into use in 2020, and will progressively pilot digital signatures to facilitate paperless transactions.