A nationwide campaign running from 1 to 30 November 2026 will promote face-authenticated digital life certificates, allowing EPS pensioners to verify their status from home.
Pensioners covered under the Employees’ Pension Scheme may soon find it much easier to submit their annual life certificates, with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation pushing a digital process that can be completed from home on a smartphone. According to Livemint, the EPFO’s regional office in Agra is preparing an awareness drive to help local pensioners use the system during the government’s fifth Nationwide Digital Life Certificate Campaign, which runs from 1 to 30 November 2026.
The campaign, announced by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, is designed to encourage wider use of digital life certificates and face authentication, a system that lets pensioners confirm their identity without appearing in person at an office or bank. Government materials say the technology works on both Android and iOS devices, while the official Jeevan Pramaan portal sets out the app and device requirements for Aadhaar-based face authentication, including minimum operating-system versions for supported phones. The aim is to spare older pensioners, people with health problems and those living far from the office that holds their records from repeated trips for a process that has traditionally been handled face to face.
The government says the nationwide drive will span about 2,000 cities and districts and will bring together pension-disbursing banks, India Post Payments Bank, pensioners’ welfare associations, EPFO, state governments and other agencies. It is targeting 2.30 crore digital life certificates, including 1.50 crore through face authentication. The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare has said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Unique Identification Authority of India will provide technical support, while the programme will also include camps, doorstep assistance, grievance support and, in some cases, health checks and Aadhaar-related help.
The push for digital verification comes alongside wider changes in how EPFO handles pension payments. The organisation’s Centralised Pension Payment System, rolled out across its regional offices from 1 January 2025, allows EPS pensioners to receive payments through any branch of any scheduled commercial bank in the country. EPFO said the system was intended to reduce the problems pensioners faced when moving to another city or changing banks, because they no longer need to transfer their Pension Payment Order merely to keep receiving their pension.
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