CBN Mulls Biometric Authentication for ATM to Stem Fraud

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is planning to introduce biometric authentication of Point of Sale (POS) and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) to address safety of customers’ funds and avoid losses through compromise of Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) by 2015, according to Mallam Lamido Sanusi Lamido, governor of the CBN.

Lamido, said the initiative was amongst others being undertaken to ensure that frauds and other factors that promote financial exclusion of Nigerians are eliminated in the financial system.

The governor represented by John Chukwudifu, branch controller, Abuja, at the opening ceremony of the week-long stakeholders’ sensitisation forum on the just introduced cashless policy in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), said the apex bank was aware of the teething problems being faced by Nigerians since the introduction of the cash-less policy.

He assured that the apex bank and the deposit money banks (DMBs) were doing everything to address the challenges and make electronic banking the preferred option of transactions in the economy.

Sanusi said: “No doubt, with the introduction of cashless society, there would be prevalent use of credit card to perform transactions on ATM, POS and Internet banking, and these transactions would have to pass through the public infrastructure which are prone to cyber threats as being experienced in developed economy of the world. Case of debit and credit cards cloning are other vulnerable areas that need urgent attention for the country to reap the benefits of cashless society.

“The CBN had taken a giant step to gain the confidence of ATM consumers following the circular enforcing migration from magstripe type of debit card to chip and Pin (EMV compliance) type of debit card. Statistics show that this effort has reduced the fraud incidences by 90 per cent. “Many customers are now embracing these of electronic (ATM and POS) channels in their transactions because of near impossible efforts of would be fraudsters in being able to clone debit cards to perpetrate fraud as it was the case during the premigration era” he said.