Morpho (Safran) has announced a major new contract to provide a digital onboarding system for Airtel, India’s biggest mobile network operator. What’s more, Morpho will use the Aadhaar national biometric citizen registry to authenticate Airtel subscribers.
It’s going to start as a proof of concept initiative in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, but it could expand on a massive scale; Airtel boasts of 228 million users. Users will be able to subscribe at various retail outlets in the city using MorphoTablets for digital enrollment.
The move echoes similar projects underway in neighboring countries. Pakistan’s government mandated biometric enrollment for MNO subscriptions in response to last year’s Peshawar terrorist attack against a school, and a similar project has since been undertaken in Bangladesh. For their part, India’s MNO’s have been eager to use the Aadhaar system for subscriber onboarding, perceiving it as a means of administrative efficiency.
Meanwhile, it’s a significant project for Morpho in light of the company’s announcement that it would be moving into mobile authentication, providing a major opportunity to establish its presence in that area.
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December 11, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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