Looking back a decade or so, biometric technology was something that felt feasible only in science fiction movies. And its only aspect we were familiar with was fingerprint recognition which was majorly used to identify criminals and enter protected areas.

We sure have come a long way since then and today, biometric technology is an integral part of our daily lives. It’s used in almost all the major aspects of life including payments, attendance, door access, logging into premises, etc. More recently, biometrics technology has also seeped into mobile phones, banking, and border security, bringing with itself undeniable convenience and security.

Let’s take a deeper look into the matter and understand biometrics.

Essentially, biometric technology is an automated process that seeks to replace the time consuming authentication processes and involves some sort of biological characteristics unique to each individual, some of the most commonly used traits are fingerprints, iris, voice and facial recognition.

Biometrics and agricultural development

With over 260 million Indians engaged in agriculture, it was pivotal for India to enable easier, more secure access to services. Also, it was equally important to ensure that welfare benefits of such schemes went directly to the needy and the middlemen involved. And for the very same reason, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was launched in 2010. It is globally considered to be the first program that aimed at providing a unique identification number to each of the country’s resident.

As such, it was impossible to register the fingerprint data of more than 0.26 billion farmers with their hardened fingers, one of the prime reasons why the identification authority chose to include iris recognition. Subsequently, a number of different iris-based systems like pension distribution, banking, attendance, micro-finance, etc, came to being and were deployed by the government.

For the farmers in remote areas of India, there has been a banking revolution with the emergence of biometric based micro ATMs. Few of the benefits the system renders are:

•  Easy opportunity to approach financial assistance
• Doorstep payment
• Minimized queuing
• Swift transactions
• Improved security

Since its inception in 2012, biometric technology in banking has been tremendously beneficial to farmers facing the barrier of illiteracy and helped them with financial security and equality.

From what we know so far, biometric technology also has the potential to reduce the risks and costs attached to the process of lending. It encourages the borrowers to repay their loans and provide confidence to financial institutions to extend more loans to creditworthy farmers.

For more into the world of biometrics, keep following Starlink India, a leading manufacturer and exporter of biometric identification devices.

Checkout our other products:

1. Attendance punching machine
2. Facial recognition system
3. Labour management system
4. Payroll software