Biometric Update (2021) News article / media

Nepal considers $14M biometric national ID card bids from Thales and Idemia

Biometric Update

Ref: SRC-005-NPL-002

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202106/nepal-considers-14m-biometric-national-id-card-bids-from-thales-and-idemia

Accessed: 3/24/2026

Summary

Reports competitive bids from Thales (USD 14.38M) and IDEMIA (USD 14.61M) for Nepal's national biometric ID card programme to distribute 12 million cards. Notes IDEMIA's prior pilot of 117,000 cards and earlier controversial sole-source contract. Confirms AFIS-to-multimodal-ABIS upgrade with 10 fingerprints and 2 iris scans.

View Harvard reference

Biometric Update (2021). 'Nepal considers $14M biometric national ID card bids from Thales and Idemia', Biometric Update, June 2021. Available at: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202106/nepal-considers-14m-biometric-national-id-card-bids-from-thales-and-idemia (Accessed: 24 March 2026).

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Linked Cases (1)

NPL-002 NPL Operational Deployment (Limited Rollout)

National Identity Card (Rastriya Parichaya Patra) — Biometric ABIS for Identity Deduplication and Verification

Social assistance Classical ML