A Costa Rican bank has contracted a biometrics company to install facial recognition technology in its mobile banking system, according to an article by Jaime Lopez in The Costa Rice Star. Coming in the wake of a number of phishing attacks against Costa Ricans using online banking, Grupo Mutual’s new biometric security mechanism will be provided by FacePhi Biometrics, a developer of facial recognition technologies.
The system will essentially scan users’ faces when they’re using the bank’s online services, authenticating their identities and thereby adding an extra layer of protection to the system the bank already has in place. It’s the same kind of technology we’re seeing in similar applications like the new Android “face unlock” feature, and it’s finding wider and wider applications, even entering into the comedy club scene with laugh-detection software.
But it’s the technology’s security applications that are of salient importance as more and more financial transactions move into the mobile world. Grupo Mutual has much to gain from biometric security, as does the Latin American banking industry in general – it currently loses about 40 million euros a year to online phishing, according to a press release from FacePhi.
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October 31, 2014 – by Alex Perala
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