The Central Bank of Jordan has selected BIO-key International to underpin a national biometric authentication programme for the country’s financial sector, a project aimed at removing passwords and hardware tokens from the way Jordanians reach their bank accounts.
The regulator is using BIO-key’s PortalGuard and WEB-key technologies to enable secure biometric authentication across digital and financial environments, in a sector serving a population of 11.6 million. The stated objective is to reduce and eventually eliminate customer dependence on passwords, tokens, and other legacy credentials along with the costs of running them. Tying authentication to a person rather than to something they carry or memorise is meant to deliver a more consistent and cheaper experience across the banking system.
“Our vision is to establish biometric authentication as the national standard, reducing reliance on passwords and other legacy authentication methods,” said Alaa Wrekat, head of the cybersecurity department at the Central Bank of Jordan. He said the collaboration could “set a new benchmark for secure digital identity in Jordan’s financial sector.”
Wrekat said the bank picked the vendor for its biometric expertise and its record supporting large-scale deployments at financial institutions across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Discussions with Jordanian institutions placed critical emphasis on BIO-key’s technological contribution to one of the world’s largest biometric banking deployments, which supports more than 30 million customers across over 850 branches. Its engagement with Jordan’s financial sector developed through work with banking and cybersecurity leaders there, including a digital identity and cybersecurity workshop it ran with the Association of Banks in Jordan in Amman earlier this month, held under the patronage of director general Dr. Maher Al-Mahrouq.
The scope, implementation framework, and timeline are being developed between BIO-key and the central bank, with further detail to be announced as the programme advances. BIO-key operates across the United States, Spain, Portugal, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Nigeria, and sells identity and access management and biometric authentication to banking, government and healthcare customers.
Jordan has been hard-wiring identity into public and commercial life since it passed a law making digital ID mandatory across all sectors, and neighbouring regulators have set firm deadlines of their own, with the UAE moving to end SMS and email one-time passcodes for digital banking in favour of biometrics and passkeys.
Sources: GlobeNewswire
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
