Iris mobile NFC barcode ATM app

Citi tests ATMs that replace plastic cards with mobile phones, QR codes, NFC and iris scans (NFC World)

Customers using one of the new Irving ATMs download a mobile app and set up the transactions they wish to make when they reach the ATM on their mobile phone. They can then chose to have a QR code scanned by the ATM, tap their NFC phone against the ATM or have their iris scanned to authenticate themselves in order to complete the transaction they previously logged inside the mobile app.

This "grab bag" ID regime is interesting. Throw in Bluetooth, fingerprints, RFID and chip-on-card technology and the number of permutations of possible ID deployments goes up even higher. This is good news both for consumers and for business with ID management challenges.

Face rec ATM debuts in Baltimore

Face-scanning ATM test in Baltimore (PYMNTS)

Securityplus Federal Credit Union is installing the biometric ATM at one of its seven branches. Instead of calling in each member for a photo session, the ATM will snap a picture after members enter their eight-digit PIN. When the member later returns to the ATM for another transition, if the face is deemed a match, the transaction is granted without requiring the PIN again.

The summer of finger veins continues

Biometric ATM technology proves to be a hit in Eastern Europe (Companies and Markets)

Polish bank BPS was the first in Europe to install biometric ATM technology. The technology, developed by Hitachi, allows a user to gain access to their account without a card or pin number. It is an example of so-called "finger vein" biometrics, which involves recognising a unique pattern of micro-veins beneath the surface that is then referenced with a pre-registered profile.

Finger veins sure have been a hot topic in biometrics this summer.



From Hitachi:
Finger vein authentication uses leading-edge light transmission technology developed by Hitachi to undergo pattern-matching and authentication. Near-infrared light is transmitted through the finger and partially absorbed by hemoglobin in the veins to capture a unique finger vein pattern profile, which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify individual identity.

Image source: Hitachi

Seeing a lot more about finger veins lately...

Poland's Getin Bank deploys Hitachi finger vein biometric tech in branches

Nowadays, biometrics is considered to be the best method of authentication in the banking sector with a wide range of applications, including at ATMs, branches and internet banking payments. "Within the framework of Getin Up project we want to offer our customers the package of technical innovations that will facilitate them day-by-day using of banking services. Our long-term objective is to implement biometrics in all bank branches." - said Karol Karolkiewicz, member of the Management Board of Getin Noble Bank.

Biometric technology is used to authenticate a person based on unique human physical or behavioural characteristics such as iris, fingerprint, voice or finger vein patterns. Getin Bank chose finger vein biometrics based on it being safe and secure via the use of the unique structure of blood vessels inside fingers.

Citi unveils bank branch-in-a-box

Citi launches new ATM in Asia (Banking Business Review)

Citi has rolled out a new ATM in Asia, Citibank Express, which enables customers to perform nearly all banking jobs including opening accounts and applying for loans, cards and cashier’s checks, without visiting a branch.

New machines are already being installed in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, while installation at in-branch and out-of-branch locations across Asia and globally will follow later this year.

For customer identity authentication, the new machine is outfitted with an online banking connection, video-conferencing and biometric capability.

Malaysia & Singapore are already at the forefront of biometric deployments so it's no surprise Citi is rolling out the machines there first.

India: Finance Ministry urges banks to adopt biometric ATM's

Finger print based ATMs coming soon (Hindustan Times)

Your finger print or eye scan may soon be enough to withdraw cash from ATMs. For that, you will require a biometric based Aadhaar number. In a bid to encourage higher enrollment for unique identification or Aadhaar number, the finance ministry has asked all public sector and rural banks to speed up setting up biometric cash dispensers.

India: Biometrics help make Old-Age pensions easier to collect

Micro-ATM using Aadhaar data delivers cash to villagers (The Hindu)

Rampati Debbarma, a 71-year-old tribal woman of Burakha village in West Tripura district on Thursday pressed her finger on an Aadhaar-enabled micro-ATM to get her old-age pension in cash.
...
“Earlier, I used to walk about 10 km from my village to Mandwi Block headquarters for withdrawal of my pension from Gramin Bank, but today I got it at my doorstep,” she said.

Customers Embrace "Controversial" Technology

Fingerprints the new ATM PINs (The Daily Telegraph - Australia)

The bank has revealed it will explore introducing controversial technology that stores biometric data, replacing the need for PINs, after research suggested customers were willing to embrace it. [emphasis mine]

What percentage of people must embrace something before it ceases to be "controversial"? The article's implicit answer is "more than 79%."

The article is only five sentences long, so I'm not cherry-picking an odd sentence from a long article. The whole set of the article's facts is that a bank's study found that a Pareto of people are totally OK with fingerprint biometrics, which pretty much means that they're the opposite of controversial.

Pro Tip to Journalists: Keep Your Eye on Iris v. Retina

What is it about journalists and the human retina? I'd estimate that at least 95% of the time a journalist uses the term "retina" in association with biometric identity management modalities, they actually mean "iris". Does anybody know why this is?

After decades, ATMs still play key role in banking (Eagle Tribune - North Andover, MA)

He said tests are being conducted in Brazil on using biometric identification — scanning retinas or fingerprints — for ATMs. In Europe, he said, there are ATMs where customers can apply and be approved for a loan during their ATM sessions. “So the technology is there to do that,” Kerstein said.

You will never see a retina scanner in an ATM. As far as ATM deployments go retina is too expensive, and it takes too much time for people to get used to using it properly. Then there's the fact that if vascular biometrics are the answer, the hand/finger is cheaper and easier and if eye biometrics are the answer, iris is cheaper and easier. For ATM's the vascular/eye combo is overkill.

Iris (left) vs. Retina (right)

The iris (left), which gives people "eye color," controls how much light enters the eyeball. The retina (right) is the structure laying along the inside, back surface of the eyeball that translates light into nervous impulses for the optic nerve to send to the brain.

In a camera analogy, the iris would be, well, the iris, since cameras have them, too. The retina would be the film, or in an even better digital analogy, the charge-coupled device (CCD) that translates light into ones and zeros for computer chips.

Both iris and retina are used as biometric modalities in identity management applications.

Iris biometrics match the iris's unique surface features (similar to fingerprints). Retina biometrics use eye's vascular network for matching.

Retinas have been in use as a biometric identifiers for far longer than iris (1984 vs 1995), but using the iris is far more common today. This is because using the iris makes for cheaper and easier identifications.

For more on the subject, I recommend this (If you're a journalist, I can't recommend it enough!). It was written in 2006. Both technologies will have improved since then, but iris technologies have improved faster.

ATM's to go Cardless as Society goes Cashless?

Frost & Sullivan predict more secure and more convenient future of ATM Cash Withdrawals (Security Park)

“It is difficult to foresee how common cardless ATM services are going to look like in the future, especially with some initiatives that aim to reduce the usage of cash, like contactless payments and digital money. However, I do believe that cardless ATM services are going to find a space within specific customer segments, urged by either the necessity or the convenience of usage,” concludes Mr. Fernandez.

As for the title of this post "ATM's to go Cardless as Society goes Cashless?," I'm not convinced of either proposition, but the blurb at Security Park does get one thinking.

I'm betting ATM cards, or other tokens, will be around for a while. Cash will be around for a lot longer than tokens.

Customized Biometric ATM's Available to Public Sector Banks for Use in Rural India

Govt banks to install 60,000 more ATMs (Business Standard)

Customised ATMs for rural areas are also being tested. “The machines used in metros may not be relevant in rural areas,” said Jaivinder Gill, managing director, NCR Corporation. He said the company had developed machines that could interact with the user in 23 languages and use biometric authorisation as a safety feature if the user was not comfortable with PIN identification.

Well that makes more sense...

...Japanese "cardless" ATM's also use two pieces of additional information.

Scan Hand for ATM Cash, No Card Required (Discovery)

First, Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank (Japanese site) customers will register their biometric information at a branch, according to Gizmag's Darren Quick. Then they'll be able to go to one of the new ATMs and get cash simply by scanning a hand and then typing in their birthdate and a four-digit PIN. [Emphasis added]

Here's a recent article on the subject: Japanese biometric ATM reads your palm, tells fortune.

This post goes into some more detail about the impracticality of single factor biometric cash machines: Polish bank claims Europe's first biometric cash point.

Japanese biometric ATM reads your palm, tells fortune

The pun was just too good (engadget). The article is funny, too.

Biometrics in Banking

Very Nice Post & Poll at the Allevate Blog

Is a biometric system fallible? Yes. The question is, is it less fallible then existing precautions already in place, and does the deployment of such a system, in simple financial terms, demonstrate a clear ROI. Again, the answer is: Yes.

Poll question: Would you be happy to replace "Chip and PIN" with "Chip and Biometric"?

Vote at the link.

Polish bank claims Europe's first biometric cash point

From The Independent (UK)

Could it be? Are token-less ATM machines now in use in Europe?

From day one, cash machines have required a token and a PIN. The token, a plastic card, identifies you to the banking network and the PIN confirms that the card is being used by someone who knows the account holder's password.

When the card is introduced into the machine, the banking network already knows the correct PIN that goes with the card. The computer network has only to answer one simple question: Does the PIN that goes with the card match the PIN that was just entered into the machine? If the answer is yes, the transaction is executed and the ATM user gets her cash.

In the case of the token-less ATM's described in the article linked above, it is less clear what is going on. Unlike the magnetized plastic card, fingerprints and PIN's don't store any account information so their use can't lead directly to a simple yes/no question for the bank software to sort out. So what is happening?

It's probably not the case that the bank customer puts their finger on a sensor and the bank software identifies the proper account from the finger alone to be confirmed later by the PIN. This would require the bank software to answer a yes/no question as many times as it has finger vein-enabled accounts every time someone uses the machine. Example: Does this finger go with account 1? If no, does this finger go with account 2? If no...

I suspect that, in order to dispense with the plastic card, the machine's software designers ask the user to input their PIN first. That would reduce the number of yes/no questions the software must answer in order to confidently establish a user's identity by a factor of 10,000 by allowing the software to search only from among accounts that use the same PIN. Given that there probably aren't very many consumer checking accounts that are finger-vein accessible, the customers of BPS SA aren't likely to notice any increase in the machine's response time over earlier cash machine models.

A system, such as the one described in the article, however, is likely to experience considerable growing pains. First, in order to serve other bank's customers and to reap the considerable fees to be charged in so doing, the machine must still support the old fashioned card-and-PIN model, adding to the costs of the machine by adding an input device to the older model (sensor/card reader/key pad vs. card reader/key pad).

Then, as the number of the bank's customers which use the finger-based method to access their account increases, the number of yes/no questions the software must sort through increases as well, slowing response time.

When my local bank adopts a finger-based system, I can start using the BPS SA machines while in Poland, correct? Not necessarily. If my bank uses the same Hitachi software that BPS SA uses, then things might work out, but if it has chosen another finger-based biometric vendor then things are unlikely to go well unless the banks involve a middleware vendor such as SecurLinx.

Over time and with the giant leaps in computing power implied by Moore's Law, applications like the one described in the linked article will be brought to the market improving the efficiency of the banking industry and improving the lives of people worldwide. Those days, however, are still in the future. The BPS SA case is probably best seen as a proof-of-concept experiment, rather than a full commercial deployment.

The exact same critiques could have been and probably were voiced when John Shepherd Barron, the inventor of the cash machine, first pitched his idea to Barclays way back in 1967. Kudos to BPS SA for blazing the trail.