National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced Tech5, an international touchless biometric solutions management company, as the winner of PayAuth Challenge — a global-level hackathon — for creating an innovative alternative for authenticating UPI-based transactions. The solution, developed by Tech5, involves using biometric in a secured manner to authenticate the financial transactions on UPI. Tech5 has also been rewarded prize money of $20,000 along with a chance to develop a proof of concept (POC) with NPCI.
PayAuth hackathon sought to explore the practicability of products and solutions that utilise factors like biometrics and facial recognition to provide a more user-friendly way to authenticate and authorise transactions on the UPI platform. This challenge received more than 100 entries. While Tech5 emerged as the winner, the jury announced Infobip, Juspay and Minkasu as the joint runners-up of the challenge. Prize money of $10,000 will be distributed among the joint three winners.
Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI said, “This challenge brought together the brightest of minds to create exceptional and innovative solutions to perform digital transactions with ease and safety. We will explore the alternative authorisation solutions created by the winners to facilitate a customer-friendly payment authentication mechanism for the ever-expanding UPI consumer base.”
