Brazil makes facial biometric checks mandatory for mobile phone lines

Brazil makes facial biometric checks mandatory for mobile phone lines

28 October 2026: Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel has approved a rule that will make mobile customers prove who they are with a face scan to open or keep a phone line. Technical norm GT-SEG.2026.11, issued by Anatel's Superintendency of Planning and Regulation and announced on 28 October, requires operators of the Personal Mobile Service to use facial recognition to identify individuals and individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEI).

Not yet independently verified. This rests on Anatel's own news release of 28 October 2026. We have not read the text of technical norm GT-SEG.2026.11 itself, so the notification rules and the alternative procedures it mentions are not described here. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What the operators must do

The procedure requires facial recognition with a liveness check, compared against existing biometric databases, which may be public or run by private suppliers. Validation has to be available at operators' physical stores and on their official websites and apps. The norm also provides alternative procedures for cases where biometric validation is not possible, and data protection safeguards in line with Brazil's general data protection law, the LGPD.

Anatel says the aim is to make it harder to activate lines with false data or someone else's identity. The proposal came from the technical subgroup on fraud and scams within the Technical Group supporting Public Security (GT-Seg), and was approved by consensus of its members.

The deadlines

Implementation is staged:

• 30 September 2027: the procedure must be in place for new prepaid activations;
• 31 December 2027: for new postpaid activations, number portability, SIM swaps and changes to registration or contract details requested by the customer;
• 31 December 2028: users not yet validated must be re-registered;
• from January 2029: lines that have not been regularised are liable to suspension and then cancellation, subject to the notification rules and deadlines in the norm.

Who else this reaches

The rule falls on the operators, but it creates work for the suppliers behind them. Operators will need identity verification and liveness detection at a national scale, in stores and inside their apps, and the norm explicitly allows matching against private biometric databases as well as public ones. Vendors of identity verification software, document and face matching, and fraud prevention tools for telecoms now have a dated buying cycle in Brazil.

Businesses that rely on SMS for login codes or payment confirmations also stand to benefit. SIM swaps are on the list of transactions that will need biometric validation by the end of 2027, and SIM swap fraud is one of the ways attackers take over accounts protected by text-message codes.

What to watch

The re-registration of the existing base by the end of 2028 is the large task, and the suspension of unvalidated lines from 2029 will reach company-issued phones as well as personal ones. Companies with fleets of corporate lines in Brazil should ask their operator how the validation will be done for lines held in a company's name by individual employees. Our catalogue lists 7 identity management products.

Related on TrustList:

• ICASA drafts biometric checks for every SIM activation and swap
• Numeracle raises $28m from Edison Partners to verify businesses that call and text
• PTA drafts passport checks for foreign SIMs and travel eSIMs

Sources

• Anatel: Anatel aprova validacao biometrica obrigatoria para usuarios de telefonia movel (28 October 2026), 28 October 2026