Biometrics Shaping the Future of Financial Institutions

In recent few years, financial institutions have seen important changes with the application of emerging technologies. The main projection is reflected in the passwords & PINs based functionality of the financial institutions where biometrics are getting involved with innovations. The central idea behind the biometrics is to provide a secure environment where users can easily access their accounts and make payments that facilitate all forms of digital security.

Use of biometrics in banking provides the seamless & easy environment to the customers. In response to the benefits involved in its implementation, banks are jumping into biometric technology. And, it confirms that 90% of users are willing to adopt biometrics in order to replace the password feature.

PINs and Passwords aren't enough anymore

Traditionally, banks are using PIN and password to authenticate their customers' identity and customers use a PIN and password to access their accounts and other banking solutions. But this method of providing authentication has been constantly forged by hackers as it is easy for them to manipulate and decode the password with the software available in the market.

Hence, banks around the world are adopting biometrics to authenticate customers accessing their services. Biometric is not limited to the banks only; other financial service providers are also adapting it to identify customers and to provide safeguard environment for easy transactions.

Deployment of Biometrics in Indian Financial Institution

There is no doubt that the deployment of a biometric authentication solution is on a rise than ever before. The following are some newly added features into financial institutions where biometric is playing a crucial role to protect the entire system from frauds:

1. The introduction of a two-way biometric authentication process in banking is making KYC (Know Your Customer) faster and convenient for customers. It improves the security by using biometric characteristics. Hence, verification takes less time and the customer gets easy access to use the banking services in just one-click.
2. Digital Certificate for Pensioners named “Jeevan Praman” is a biometric-enabled digital service for pensioners. It uses the “Aadhaar” platform for biometric authentication of the pensioner and after successful biometric authentication, it generates Digital Life Certificate. The Pension Disbursing Agencies can access the certificate online and via electronic delivery, transfers the pension in the bank account without any manual intervention.
3. Biometric ATM is another latest application of biometric authentication for Banking, Coupons & Self service ATM. Biometrics ATM offers an ATM type interface along with at-least one biometrics capturing device like a fingerprint scanner, iris camera, face recognition camera, palm/ finger vein scanner to verify the identity of the customer. It enables them to use their accounts for easy money transfer or withdraw cash anywhere, anytime just in one-click.
4. To boost the Digital India campaign into the next level, the government is trying to put the transaction of money totally digitized and going to introduce the chip-based credit or debit cards for the users with the biometric feature. The chip-based cards use the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chip technology, which is the global standard for credit card and debit card payments. These cards are embedded with a microprocessor that store and protect cardholders data. It is an evolution in our payment/ transaction system that will help to increase security, reduce card fraud and enable the use of future value-added applications.