Capitec Enrolls 9 Million Customers Using BIO-key Technology

South Africa’s Capitec Bank Holding Company now has more than 9 million customers enrolled in its biometric client identification system. The in-branch system was first deployed back in 2015, and is built with BIO-key’s fingerprint recognition technology.

Capitec uses the BIO-key system to verify the identities of customers at physical branches. Doing so allows the company to deliver more efficient services, and many Capitec customers seem to appreciate those benefits. The company has somewhere north of 10 million customers, which means that the vast majority of its clientele is now enrolled in the biometric system.

“One of the most powerful indicators of the value we provide our customers is when they expand their use of BIO-key software in the years after initially deploying it,” said BIO-key Strategy and Compliance SVP Jim Sullivan. “Capitec was one of the first in the world to leverage fingerprint biometrics to secure their clients’ identities against theft and fraud. They demonstrated to their clients the advantages of using fingerprint data to increase their client’s security, offer paperless transactions and make banking faster.”

The Capitec system was one of the first large-scale biometric enrollment systems in South Africa. However, BIO-key has significantly expanded its presence on the African continent in the years since. In November, the company opened a new African subsidiary in Nigeria, and it has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Technology Transfer Institute of Africa (TTI). That MoU added TTI to BIO-key’s Channel Alliance Partner distribution program, and it was followed by the World Bank’s decision to approve $433 million in funding for the development of Nigeria’s national biometric ID registry.

More recently, BIO-key and TTI announced that they have signed a $30 million contract to create a biometric authentication system for an unnamed telecommunications company in Nigeria. The client plans to use the platform for employee authentication.

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March 13, 2020 – by Eric Weiss