Saturday, March 10, 2018

The rise of biometric banking as fight against fraud is stepped up

8:50 AM    
Barclays has announced the arrival of

personal biometric scanners for its corporate clients to combat banking fraud. Finger vein scanners are to be available in 2015, followed by voice recognition technology in phone calls to replace passwords or security questions. It remains to be seen how effective this is with widespread use.
Biometrics is the science of recognising an individual based on his or her physical and behavioural traits. Biometric-based authentication systems are widely considered to be more reliable than established password systems for verifying individuals and ensuring they are who they say they are. Other examples include palm print, face and vein recognition, iris and retina scanning, DNA matching and even odour recognition.
Although not yet commonplace, biometrics are expected to become so over the next three to five years. Currently, the biggest users are governments which have already implemented biometrics into citizen identity documents (such as passports and national ID cards) and it is estimated that by 2015 biometric citizen IDs will outnumber non-biometrics by 4:1. In 2006, the UK joined 40 other countries in introducing e-passports that use facial recognition technology to authenticate citizens.