Samsung India launched a Galaxy Tab device with iris recognition, targeting government and enterprise applications where security is a key requirement.

Galaxy Tab Iris will “provide cashless and paperless services in various applications such as banking, e-governance services such as passports, taxation, healthcare and education”. It supports Aadhaar identification numbers, which are used to collate biometric and demographic data.

Touting its local credentials, Samsung also described the device as a “Make In India innovation” – supporting a government initiative intended to boost the country’s manufacturing sector.

“Our India R&D team has made significant investments in biometric technology research and we built this product leveraging our knowledge in hardware design, biometrics and security for a high speed scan, greater accuracy and high reliability,” said Aloknath De, corporate VP and CTO, Samsung India R&D.

The company is also making available an Identity SDK, for application developers to use in building financial inclusion, payments and authentication services. “This will encourage our start-up ecosystem to rapidly build relevant apps and services,” the executive said.

Aside from its biometrics capabilities, Galaxy Tab Iris has a 7-inch 1024×600 screen, 1.2GHz quadcore processor, 2G and 3G connectivity, and 8GB of onboard storage (with microSD expansion slot).

It costs INR13,499 ($200).