Sound The Trumpet : Biometric Banking to Become Commonplace

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“Biometric Banking to Become Commonplace”
by Prophecy News Watch
June 3rd, 2014

Next time you seek to access your account, the sound of your voice or the shape of your eyes could be all that you need. Some major U.S. banks are reportedly developing the use of voice and facial recognition technologies, among other biometric systems to help identify customers, facilitate account opening and ATM access. The key driving factor behind these biometric developments is said to be fraud prevention.

News.com.au has reported that Biometrics Institute’s technical panel chair Dr. Ted Dunstone said speaker authentication was a good way to help prevent fraudsters accessing customer accounts, and he expected it to become commonplace in Australia within the next few years. Dr Dunstone said mobile phone customers were also not far off from being able to pay for goods using biometrics on their phone — for example by the swipe of a fingerprint to complete a transaction.

A bank spokeswoman for ANZ, Australia said the bank was looking at using a variety of biometrics to help better identify customers: “We are currently piloting the use of voice recognition technology as a way of identifying customers over the phone or as a two-factor authentication when making large transactions…We are also looking into the use of additional forms of biometrics such as fingerprint and eye retina scanners, as an additional security measure at ATMs.”

National Australia Bank, which first introduced biometrics technology in 2009, now has more than 150,000 customers who have enrolled their voice prints for identification purposes, and is now looking to expand the use of biometrics technology to other areas including mobile devices. The Biometrics Institute Asia Pacific Conference in Sydney , scheduled for late May, is to be attended by worldwide experts to discuss the growing use of biometrics particularly in the financial services industry.

Meanwhile, Planet Biometrics has also reported that Israeli firm, BioCatch, has announced the launch of an eCommerce fraud prevention solution that uses “behavioral biometric analysis to detect suspicious behavior and authenticate repeat customers, while reducing customer friction associated with additional security verifications and checks.”

BioCatch’s system collects and analyses over 400 bio-behavioral, cognitive and physiological parameters by observing how the user holds and touches a mobile device, interacts with an online site, and responds to subtle hidden challenges. The system then authenticates visitors upon their return to a site as well as identifying users exhibiting behaviors consistent with fraudsters.

According to BioCatch CEO Benny Rosenbaum, the platform is “a natural progression of our continued successes protecting banks and online spaces. We are effectively addressing the two greatest problems facing eCommerce today: user-experience and fraud."

The BioCatch eCommerce solution can reportedly replace the CAPTCHA, allowing for a faster and easier checkout or enrollment process by a website's customers. In addition, the solution also provides fraud teams and management with complementary data, which can be incorporated into Big Data stores to further correlate behavioral biometric data with other transactional and personal information.

Fast Company.com have reported that another Israeli firm, Nice Systems, one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, is marketing their new real-time authentication system to financial institutions as a replacement for identify verification questions. The company claims that their system, which uses algorithms to identify an individual user's voice, will offer banks faster call turnaround and save money in call center costs.

All of which may translate into great news for the “bottom line” of the firms marketing these innovative tools, and for the banks and financial institutions benefiting from the time/cost savings in authentications and fraud loss mitigations. But how enthusiastically are bank customers themselves embracing these technologies?

Apparently very well, both in relation to voice biometrics and other more commonplace biometric systems such as fingerprint and eye scans. Biometric Update.com reported on a recent survey on mobile devices and the financial services industry, that was conducted on behalf of the Deloitte Center for Financial Services. The survey found that 72 percent of respondents would welcome the use of biometric identification (such as fingerprints or eye scans) to enable a mobile device( such as a tablet or smartphone) for financial transactions, as long the secure usage of banking services was enhanced.

In an illustration of just how pervasive these biometric technologies are becoming even outside of Western locations, Digital Persona.com reports: “banks in Japan have widely deployed biometrics-enabled ATMs that allow customers to withdraw currency or conduct other transactions after a successful fingerprint scan. There are currently more than 80,000 biometrics-enabled ATMs in Japan and more than 15 million customers using them. Similar programs have been launched in China, India and Brazil. Additionally, banks are designing and deploying biometrics-based systems to comply with increasingly more sophisticated anti-fraud and anti-laundering regulations”.

All indications are that these biometric developments are now rapidly evolving into a global system that is progressing from mere identification and authentication, to a system where economic transactions locally and globally will not be practical or even permissible without them.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13