Not so long ago, the idea of having personal identity verified by fingerprints or iris patterns was confined to the realms of science fiction. Now, biometric technology is being rolled out for a variety of applications, covering everything from government-issued ePassports and identity (ID) cards to securing corporate laptops. The banking sector has made tentative steps using the technology for applications such as staff access control, customer authentication and mobile ATM-access. As new standards emerge, could biometric applications gain further ground in the banking sector?
The list of banks that are using the technology is growing all the time. But many of the most innovative schemes in the past couple of years have not been in technology hot-spots. Instead they have sprung up in countries such as Mexico, where Banco Azteca has deployed a biometric identity-system targeted at the unbanked in more than 1400 of its branches.
