Verify Biometrics for Your bank account before 31st May or your account will be blocked

Those people who have bank accounts at any bank in Pakistan will now have to verify biometrics before May 31. And in case, you don’t opt to avail biometric authentication, your bank account is going to be suspended, Samaa News reports.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had issued a directive last year in October that all the commercial banks including microfinance and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) must verify the bank accounts of their customers with biometrics. Therefore, all the local banks have been sending SMS to the account holders for biometric verification at the nearest branch to avoid account blocking. However, there is no definite deadline as some banks including HBL are asking for verification before May 31, while others want accounts verified by June 30, 2019.

The State Bank has also stated that account verification is applicable to all customers (irrespective of nature and currency of the account) whose identity documents are biometrically verifiable from NADRA.

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Previously, the banks had no online authentication system and the entire process was handled manually. Nevertheless, the emergence of numerous bank accounts with billions of rupees worth of transactions and misused CNICs of people along with compromised repute of the country’s banking system made it inevitable for the SBP to make biometric verification of all bank accounts mandatory.

Pakistan’s central bank’s ambitions to get all accounts biometrically verified is the part of its crackdown against money laundering and terrorism funding. SBP wants to assure that all account holders should be registered with NADRA.