How to activate your UAN and see your EPF

What this is. Your EPF, the Employees’ Provident Fund, is the retirement savings taken from your salary each month and matched by your employer. Your UAN, or Universal Account Number, is the single 12-digit ID that unlocks it online, so you can check your balance and passbook. This guide shows how to activate it.

Did you know? The EPF is one of the biggest retirement schemes in the world. EPFO looks after the savings of more than 7 crore contributing members (EPFO; the exact total depends on how members are counted, so check epfindia.gov.in). If a payslip of yours has ever shown “PF” cut from it, one of those accounts is almost certainly yours, sitting there waiting to be claimed online.

Why bother activating it. Your EPF is not idle money. It earns interest every year at a rate the government reviews and declares.

Did you know? For the year 2024-25, the EPF interest rate was 8.25% (set by the EPFO Central Board of Trustees in February 2025, with the Finance Ministry’s concurrence, the same rate as the year before). That is more than most savings accounts pay, and it is added to your account once a year. The rate is reviewed annually, so confirm the current one on epfindia.gov.in.

Activating your UAN lets you watch that balance grow, download your passbook, and keep your nominee up to date, all for free. You do not need an agent, and no genuine EPFO process asks you to pay a fee to see your own money. Anyone demanding a charge to “unlock” your PF is a scam.

Heads up: the method changed in 2026. EPFO (the body that runs the EPF) is reported to have moved UAN activation to the UMANG app with Aadhaar face authentication, and the old website route may be retired. The steps below reflect the latest reports, so confirm the current method on the official EPFO portal before you start. Here is how to do it.