The adoption of biometric technologies in banking and financial services has exploded in the last year, resulting in lenders experimenting with things like voice recognition, fingerprints, face identification, iris scanning, and many other ways to log into financial accounts.
Given that an individual’s biometric features are much more difficult to mimic than cracking someone’s password, it’s no wonder biometric technologies have become the preferred solution for banking and financial services offering loans to customers.
Modern consumers are well-informed of potential risks and refuse to compromise the security of their bank accounts, which is why online lenders and financial institutions are embracing biometric technologies to secure customer accounts and transactions.
Enhanced security methods using biometrics technologies aim to address current cybersecurity challenges including:
Fraud Detection
Many banks today will act quickly if they notice you’ve conducted a large transaction or questionable purchase from an unexpected place or location. They’ll often block the payment until they can corroborate the authenticity of the transaction by either calling or sending you an SMS to verify it was you who made the transaction.
With biometrics technology, however, lending institutions will detect and prevent financial fraud by taking into account numerous aspects (i.e.: location, spending habits, the device used, etc.) to figure out the possibilities of fraudulent transactions. If the institution deems that fraud is at work, they may request additional user authentication such as your fingerprint.
No Banking User-Interface
Given the many options for unique identification features such as voice, fingerprints, iris scanning, and more, it may become easier to shop or make payments without any visible form of authentication. In other words, the financial services companies may be able to authenticate transactions and customer identity with very little use of application UI or none of it at all. Imagine applying for a debt consolidation loan using just the biometric verification!
Outdated Pin Codes
Soon enough, the EMV card with an integrated fingerprint reader will become the preferred method of payment, eventually making debit and credit cards obsolete. Your fingerprint data will be safely stored in the card and not saved on the bank’s or the lender’s servers, protecting you from cyber theft or potential security breaches on your financial institution’s end.
Not all biometrics technologies are created equal, though, as enterprise biometrics offer far more advanced security features than consumer biometrics, as explained in one of our previous blog posts.
Given the absence of a single, comprehensive federal law to regulate the collection and use of personal data or related biometric data, the creation of new technologies and applications is open to developers. While this is good for inventors, it also results in a patchwork system of regulations and technologies that sometimes overlap or contradict each other.
Let us help guide you when it comes to choosing the right biometrics solutions. Give us a call at (800) 486-1312 to speak to an Identity Expert today!
References:
identificationsystemsgroup.com/biometrics-will-take-financial-services-to-the-next-level/
identificationsystemsgroup.com/solutions/biometric-identification/
