Biometric security has been gradually working its way into our lives since the 1990s. Many people had their first tentative experience with it after arriving at work to discover a biometric time clock waiting for them to punch in. Others enjoyed their first encounter via a new laptop or smartphone that featured a fingerprint scanner or facial recognition technology.
Nowadays, we’re so used to biometric security that we barely even notice it. We pause dutifully as our smartphones scan our facial features before unlocking themselves, and we do the same when we go through airports. Indeed, most people wouldn’t be able to tell you if it’s their face or their iris being scanned. So long as the technology does its job efficiently, keeps us safe, and doesn’t feel too invasive, it seems we’re able to adapt to anything.
This being the case, you may wonder why you still need to carry bank cards and remember PINs to access your money. Is the banking industry behind when it comes to biometrics? Or are there solid reasons why we’re not simply swiping our fingerprints when we head to the supermarket or take out cash at an ATM? To explore these questions, let’s take a look at the current relationship between biometrics and banking before exploring the latest developments.
Biometrics in banking: why are we still using cards and pins?
The first part of the answer lies in a lack of consumer demand. Point of Sale (POS) and Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) technology is widespread, easy to use, and effective. So, neither the banks nor their customers have been clamouring for an overhaul. Add to this the astronomical cost of bringing in all-new biometric banking technology, and you have a formula for keeping things as they are.
That being said, there certainly have been upgrades. You can now keep digital cards on your phone or smartwatch, and these can be used at POS terminals all over the world. Most banks have given their ATMs new capabilities too, including a variety of options for secure cardless cash withdrawals.
What about biometric technology?
Though banks appear to have been slower than other industries to adopt biometrics, there are plenty of examples of it being put to good use. The key is that the upgrades are delivered sequentially, giving banks time to assess their efficacy and customers time to adapt. Indeed, if we take a closer look at the relationship between banks and biometrics, we can see that it extends back more than two decades.
Texas Bank United rolled out iris scanners way back in 1999. Eight years later, the Bank of Utah began using keystroke dynamics to make internet banking more secure. Banks in South Africa, the USA, Brunei, Panama, and Indonesia have long been scanning fingerprints to identify customers in branches and at ATMs. In Australia, telephone banking is often facilitated by voice recognition technology. Meanwhile, Japanese banks have been using finger vein recognition since the early 2000s.
The number of banks using biometrics is increasing by the year, and as this number grows, so too are the applications for the technology. However, as mentioned, each advancement comes in isolation from the others, so as customers, we barely notice the evolution.
Is biometric technology used behind the scenes in banking?
While the development of customer-facing biometric technology has been slow, many banks use advanced biometric access systems to ensure they’re operating with the highest level of security possible. These systems are commonly used to manage access to safe deposit boxes, but one of their most important applications is in time and attendance. Hand geometry scanners are used by some institutions, like the Shearson-Hammill Investment Bank. However, fingerprint time clocks remain the gold standard, especially those equipped for MFA (multi-factor authentication).
If you’re interested in learning more about this type of time and attendance solution, head over to the Nexus Biometric store. Once there, you can dive into the specs of some of the world’s best fingerprint time clocks and access control systems.
As for doing away with bank cards, PINs, and passwords, that prospect is a little further out of reach. Biometric markers certainly do make for more robust security solutions, but they will likely arrive in the form of MFA first. The precise authentication techniques applied to each transaction will depend greatly on how it is carried out and how high the fraud risk is.
While we’d love to ditch our wallets and passwords sooner rather than later, this gradual progression has its perks. Adaptation is far easier than it would be if there was an industry-wide overhaul, and incremental progress allows time for bugs to be ironed out. Eventually, we can look back on the 2020s and wonder how we ever got by with all those keys, cards, and passwords we had to remember.
