In an effort to stem the rising incidence of identity theft at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in the country, five technologically driven banks have concluded plans to deploy for the first time in the country’s financial sector, biometric ATMs, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can reveal.
The banks include Access Bank, Zenith, Intercontinental, UBA and Diamond bank. Biometric ATM electronically recognizes people via distinctive anatomical and behavioral traits; it has the potential to overcome many of those problems associated with identity theft through identity cards and password.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that although Smartswitch is pioneering the deployment of these biometric ATMs with its vascular recognizable switching platform, ValuCard and InterSwitch switching platforms are currently capable of supporting biometric ATMs. What they require to do is just to upgrade the technology to be able to read vascular traits.
The deployment of biometric ATMs, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered from the banks, will not replace the existing Personal Identification Number (PIN) based ATMs currently in use.
This is to give physically challenged people the option of also using the machine as well as others who may wish to continue with the password generated ATMs.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek’s investigations revealed that out of the three most popular traits in use today in the biometric technology, which comprise the fingerprint, the face and the iris, the banks have considered fingerprint only as it forms the basis of automated border-control systems in a number of countries.
Vascular recognition already has won wide acceptance in banking. More Japanese banks and credit unions have made hundreds of ATMs featuring vascular sensors available for everyday use.
In the vascular recognition systems developed by Fujitsu and TechSphere, after inserting a banking card in a cash machine, the user is prompted to hold a hand near an infrared light source.
The light source is paired with a charge-couple device similar to the one used in standard digital photography. As the near-infrared light passes through the body tissue, it is reflected by the hemoglobin in the blood.
This reflected light picked up by the Charged Coupled Device (CCD) reveals an image of the blood vessels. Within a second or two, the system filters the digitized image, creates a template that it can compare with the authorized user, and decides whether they match.
Compared with a physical token such as a bank card or with the knowledge of a secret such as PIN, biometric traits are profoundly more difficult to forge, copy, share, misplace or guess.
