The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is considering the implementation of facial or fingerprint authentication at ATMs in the region, reports the South China Morning Post.
Speaking to the Post, HKMA chairman Norman Chan Taklam said the organization was prompted to consider the technology by the introduction of facial recognition for ATMs in Macau, saying the authorities will study its use to determine whether biometric authentication could help prevent fraud and even replace PINs at ATMs in Hong Kong.
ATM fraud is a matter of growing concern in Hong Kong. As the Post reports, the number of suspicious transactions reported to police increased from 23,282 in 2012 to 76,590 last year, while the number of convictions for such offences has dropped from 160 to 102 over the same period.
While the recent Macau development may have played a role in prompting the HKMA to consider biometric ATMs, it may also have been seeing growing interest in the technology from the financial services community. Immediately after the HKMA launched a virtual testing program for FinTech last autumn, at least two banks applied to test biometric authentication technology for securities trading, and it’s a fair bet that others have shown interest in more customer-facing biometric authentication technologies since then, given the growing interest in such technology among financial institutions around the world.
Source: South China Morning Post
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May 29, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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