The Financial ID Briefing brings you top highlights from the world of biometrics, mobile ID, and finance. It is powered by FindBiometrics and Money20/20.
Biometrics Power Alibaba’s Cashless Cafe
Facial recognition, QR codes, and mobile tech combined to transform the retail experience at an experimental cafe run by Alibaba at the Taobao Maker Festival. Alibaba’s Tao Cafe replaced cashiers with an automated biometric experience, allowing customers to make purchases through the Taobao app, which links products scanned to users’ payment accounts via facial recognition.
While the cashierless process seems a tad byzantine, it fits into an ongoing trend toward greater automation in retail as enabled by biometrics. Smart vending machines, home shopping via voice command, and even naked payments at fast food restaurants—these are just some of the ways biometrics are enabling ID-focused self serve in stores.
Banking With Your Iris
Iris biometrics is continuing to become increasingly common as a consumer authentication method thanks to the technology’s inclusion on Samsung’s latest flagship smartphones. And with the mainstreaming of iris scanning comes support from financial institutions. TSB Bank is ahead of the game in this sense, as it is positioned to become the first bank in Europe to allow for iris-based mobile app access control.
Come September, TSB Bank customers who bank online with their Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ smartphones will be able to use the contactless convenience of iris biometric to securely access their accounts.
The iris biometrics technology available on Samsung’s handsets, provided by Princeton Identity, is going a long way in fulfilling predictions that the eye-based modality will go mainstream this year. Galaxy S8 and S8+ users are can use iris recognition for an expanding range of financial applications including Mastercard Identity Check, and of course Samsung Pay.
Biometrics Protect Humaniq’s Cryptocurrency Platform
Next week Humaniq is launching a Lite version of its eponymous flagship app based on blockchain auditing and biometrics technology. Starting July 31 with a trial in Ghana, the goal is to bring financial inclusivity to the region through the HMQ cryptocurrency. The platform uses facial recognition provided by VisionLabs for user authentication.
“We want to tear down barriers to making simple financial transactions for people who have not been offered services by traditional financial players,” Dinis Guarda, CEO of Humaniq, in a statement announcing the trial. “With this in mind, the Humaniq lite app offers almost zero-cost transaction financial inclusion solutions. It is easy to use: you simply need a smartphone number of the person you are sending money to.”
A Pro version of Humaniq’s app is slated for launch later this year on Android and iOS.
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July 25, 2017 – by Peter B. Counter
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