Abstract In order to avail the benefits of higher user convenience, hygiene, and improved accuracy, contactless 3D fingerprint recognition techniques have recently been introduced. One of the key limitations of these emerging 3D fingerprint technologies to replace the conventional 2D fingerprint system is their bulk and high cost, which mainly results from the use of multiple imaging cameras or structured lighting employed in these systems. This paper details the development of a contactless 3D fingerprint identification system that uses only single camera. We develop a new representation of 3D finger surface features using Finger Surface Codes and illustrate its effectiveness in matching 3D fingerprints. Conventional minutiae representation is extended in 3D space to accurately match the recovered 3D minutiae. Multiple 2D fingerprint images (with varying illumination profile) acquired to build 3D fingerprints can themselves be used recover 2D features for further improving 3D fingerprint identification and has been illustrated in this paper. The experimental results are shown on a database of 240 client fingerprints and confirm the advantages of the single camera based 3D fingerprint identification.