Techniques for multi-phase scanning based on pseudo-random sequences in capacitive fingerprint applications are described herein. In an example embodiment, a method performed by a processing device comprises: receiving measurements that are representative of a portion of a finger on a capacitive fingerprint sensor array, where the measurements are obtained from sensor elements of the capacitive fingerprint sensor array that are scanned in a multi-phase mode based on an excitation vector generated from a pseudo-random sequence; and generating a fingerprint image for the portion of the finger based on the measurements.