Biometric ATMs not viable

Johannesburg, 05 Jul 2006

A move to biometric automatic teller machines (ATMs) is not viable at this stage, as more pressing security and compliance projects are taking priority, South African banks agree.

"Nedbank's focus is on the implementation of EMV [the Europay-MasterCard-Visa specifications for chip-enabled cards] and the triple data encryption standard for card security," says Karen Drop, Nedbank's head of physical channels. "This is a global industry focus to ensure compliance to chip card technology and reduced card PIN vulnerability.

Pravesh Mahadeo, GM of Absa Group's self-service channel, agrees. "Our priorities are to bring infrastructure to previously-disadvantaged communities and the move to chip cards."

"The EMV chips have the capability for biometric authentication through fingerprint recognition. However, such technology is futuristic," says Drop.

Drop notes the challenges for implementing this technology in ATMs include height-restrictions in retina scanners, unstable fingerprints, environmental influences such as background noise for voice recognition, legislation and expense.

Self-service channels

"The use of voice recognition is being seriously considered for certain self-assisted channels like telephone banking," says Drop. "This is at an early stage of development and testing will be intensive to ensure it works with minimal inconvenience to clients."

Recently, Standard Bank embarked on a project involving speech recognition technology for verification purposes via a cellphone, which will launch soon.

Huge expense

Mahadeo explains a move to biometric-enabled ATMs would be a huge, expensive project and needs the involvement of all banks.

Herman Singh, Standard Bank's director for technology engineering, agrees. The cost of redoing ATM networks for the purposes of biometric access would be too high, and may be largely unnecessary, he says.

Liz Hazell, head of strategies at FNB, says: "There is no common standard for biometrics in the ATM space, as the technology is still evolving."