EC officials said a person will be able to access all civic facilities with the help of the card.
The 10-digit numbers will be activated once a card is issued.
More than 96.2 million voters have national ID cards at present. At least 80 million of them were given 13-digit numbers in 2008.
And over 15 million, who were included during the update, got 17-digit numbers.
The commission opted for 10 digits in its meeting on Tuesday.
Election Commissioner Md Shah Nawaz said the national identity registration wing placed the proposal after consulting experts.
The commission, he added, endorsed it considering the overall benefits.
EC Secretary Md Sirajul Islam said the process of making smart cards was now in its final stages.
“We are trying to distribute them as soon as possible,” he added.
The subdivision for national ID registration had meetings with IT experts, mobile-phone operators, PMO’s A2I Programme, universities, and experts from army’s Signal Core.
They placed a five-point proposal favouring 10-digit card numbers.
Nine of the 10 digits will be randomly formed, while the last digit will act as the checksum.
The proposal says zero would not be used as the first number, a particular digit would not appear four or more times, one particular digit would not be used three consecutive times and sequences would be kept out.
NID wing Director General Brig Gen Sultanuzzaman Md Saleh Uddin said the experts recommended the 10-digit number after reviewing NID card number systems and types of 12 countries, uniqueness, number sequence, rate of population growth, and the overall system.
They suggested the 10-digit number considering Bangladesh’s population and growth.
BUET’s computer science department chief Professor Mahfuzul Islam advocated the use of alphanumeric numbers.
He argued that around one billion NID cards could be issued using the method.
“We’ll be able to use these numbers at least for next 200 years,” he said.
A2I representative Sabbir Ahmed said there would be problems, if alphanumeric numbers were not in English.
