A new scheme for user authentication is proposed using visual cryptography and digital watermarking. The original image, mostly the photograph of the authorized person is split into shares. One of the shares is kept within the server and the other one will be printed on the identification card issued to the user. The personal information unique to the user along with his signature will be embedded within the printed share. Least significant bit watermark insertion algorithm has been used for embedding data. Experiments show that the method is efficient and effective. It was possible to retrieve the watermark information from the printed share read through a reading device with no distortion. The method can be implemented with minimum processing cost.