KYC & BIOMETRICS The way to pay: Biometrics may be the only viable method
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Biometrics are playing a key role in NatWest Bank’s retail payments strategy. And, according to David Crawford, Head of Effortless Payments, they will, eventually, be people’s technology of choice for identification and access control Bank executives often need business cards the size of a building to explain their purpose in life – and then it’s not always clear from the job title. So, David Crawford’s has a refreshing simplicity. Head of Effortless Payments at NatWest Bank precisely explains his mission: to take the hard work out of making transactions for retail customers – and much of that is being achieved with the bank’s pioneering use of biometrics.
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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 18
Making payments quick, easy but secure enough to satisfy tougher Secure Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements being introduced under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), is the juggling act that all banks are going through as the legislation makes them responsible and liable for ecommerce payment fraud. SCA, which must be implemented by the end of 2020 for payment institutions in EU member states and in September 2021 for the UK, is also occurring at a time when contactless payment use has rocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crawford and NatWest believe the answer to better security lies in using customers’ biometrics rather than relying on traditional security measures like PINs, passwords, or even signatures. Back in 2018, the bank teamed up with Visa and card manufacturer Gemalto to be the first in the UK to successfully pilot a fingerprint-activated debit card, which allows spending up to £100 per transaction. A year later, and in association with
Mastercard, it successfully trialled a fingerprint-activated credit card and, moving away from cards altogether, it has also developed a prototype fingerprint-activated payment fob. In August 2019, it started a three-month trial into voice-activated banking with 500 of its customers using Google smart speakers. The results revealed that customers were happy to use voice banking for everyday tasks, like checking balances or switching funds between accounts, but were less comfortable using it for more complicated purposes, such as setting up mortgages or pensions. Underscoring its potential benefits were a cohort among the trial group of visually impaired or physically disabled people, who were the most enthusiastic about embracing the technology for all their banking needs. Crawford admits that the general public’s continuing unease about allowing their biometric data to be stored remains the single biggest challenge to overcome. And www.fintech.finance