Johannesburg, 16 Apr 2008
The ability to conclude self-service banking transactions via an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) was a great innovation to traditional financial dealings. As with so many technical advances, banking customers in South Africa were able to enjoy the benefits of interoperable, 24/7 banking networks before most other countries.
The country is also, unfortunately, a leader when it comes to crime and there are endless stories of how ATM cards and PIN data have been stolen or copied by criminals. This means people and organisations can lose money, sometimes without actually losing their card or giving their PIN to another person.
The reality today is that passwords and PINs are inherently weak mechanisms for securing personal or corporate information, or for granting access to a banking account. Cards can be stolen and a PIN or password can be guessed or copied. Biometric authentication, such as a fingerprint reader, has been touted as a replacement to the traditional PIN, but with limited success to date.
A fingerprint reader, for example, is not a good option as it may not be able to respond accurately if the user has a cut or some form of abrasion on his finger. There are also hygiene issues to deal with, as some people may not want to share a reader that hundreds of other people have already touched.
A new technology that has been successfully introduced in Japan is palm vein authentication. This non-contact authentication process uses the patterns of the blood vessel in the hand as an identifying factor. Palm vein authentication technology consists of a small palm vein scanner that is easy and natural to use, and, more importantly, fast and highly accurate. Users simply hold their palm a few centimetres over the scanner and within a second it reads their unique vein pattern.
The scanner shines near infrared light onto the palm, displaying the vein pattern under the skin. Because it does not scan the surface of the skin, the pattern is not easily defaced by dirt, cuts or abrasions, and it is very hard to read surreptitiously or to steal. The pattern is also hard to duplicate since veins are internal to the human body and everyone's pattern is unique.
Current palm vein authentication readers offer a high level of accuracy with a very low false rejection rate. This means both financial institutions as well as consumers can rely on the technology, even though it may seem too easy.
The palm is the ideal place to scan for a biometric reading since, when compared with a finger or the back of a hand, a palm has a broader and more complicated vascular pattern and thus contains a wealth of differentiating features for personal identification. The palm normally does not have hair, which can be an obstacle for photographing the blood vessel pattern and it is less susceptible to a change in skin colour, unlike a finger or the back of a hand.
Using this technology will not make ATM transactions any more complicated or longer. In fact, there is no need for the customer to remember a PIN at all, he need only bring the ATM card that has the appropriate image stored on it. The system will compare the reading of the user's hand taken by the scanner to an image stored on the ATM card. There will be no PIN to copy and if a card is lost or stolen, nobody else can fake or guess the correct image.
Several banks in Japan have used the palm vein authentication technology for customer identification with tremendous success since 2004 and its popularity is spreading. Of course, the technology is not limited to ATMs and can be used for multiple access and authentication scenarios in business and private situations.
Palm vein authentication is fast and accurate and takes intricate readings without requiring users to touch a reader. This means the reader will not be smudged or damaged, leading to a longer, more productive life. This is also an easy way for literate and illiterate people in South Africa to accurately identify themselves and run their own bank accounts. All users need do is hold their hand over a scanner for a few seconds to accurately and securely identify themselves.
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