GIFT City to launch unassisted face authentication system for NRIs: IFSCA Chairman

Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) will soon be able to use an unassisted face-authentication system to open accounts, stay invested and transact out of GIFT City in Gujarat. “We are working with the UIDAI and Reserve Bank of India to launch an unassisted face authentication system [for NRIs]. UIDAI has already launched a face-authentication system for domestic India, but we want to do something similar for a person sitting in San Francisco or Dubai. We want NRIs to use the face authentication system to onboard himself in an unassisted manner,” K Rajaraman, Chairman, International Financial Services Authority (IFSCA), told businessline on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Fest 2025 (GFF). “If we are able to do this in the next 3-4 months, a large portion of the NRIs will find it very easy to open accounts, stay invested and maybe do all kinds of transactions out of GIFT City. We expect this KYC problem to be on top of our agenda for the next few months,” Rajaraman added. Verification process Currently, NRIs have to go through an offline verification process, which includes examination of original identification documents and the certification of a copy of these documents by authorised officials. Earlier, while speaking on the topic From Regulation to Reinvention: Transforming India’s Financial Architecture with IFSCA at GFF, Rajaraman said: “The Finance Minister who chairs the financial stability and development council has directed all the financial sector regulators in India to work on the KYC-piece and ensure that we have effective and multiple ways in which a KYC can be done. Therefore, we had launched a consultation paper on assisted video KYC. We are likely to notify that by November which means paper-based applications for opening a deposit account or an investment account in GIFT City will not be required.” Talking about Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement at GFF about foreign currency settlement system in GIFT City, Rajaraman said: “One of the things that the global financial centre needs to do is to ensure efficiency in the movement of cash. If I, as an investor, am making payment to an insurance company, I would want my policy to be subscribed instantly instead of waiting for 24 or 36 hours while the transaction goes through a corresponding banking system in New York or elsewhere. We want the transaction to be settled instantly. So, that requires a real-time gross settlement system. The Clearing Corporation of India was authorised to set up the foreign currency clearing system. What was today launched by the Finance Minister is a US-dollar clearing system, which ensures that the inter IBU (IFSC Banking Unit) or inter-bank transfers within IFSC to be done real time or near real time. This ensures the efficiency of cash movement within GIFT City becomes international-grade.” He added: “Similarly, this system will now look at clearing other currencies like euro or British pound and a few other currencies that have got some nominees. We will also be looking at how to do settlement within domestic India — the Rupee-Dollar settlement. We are also looking to do settlements between a bank in GIFT City and a bank in Dubai, New York. All this might happen over the next six months,” he added. Published on October 7, 2025