DERMALOG Biometric Tech Secures Over 64 Million Nigerian Bank Accounts

Dermalog has deployed its multimodal biometric authentication system across Nigeria’s banking sector, now protecting over 64 million customer accounts. The system, developed in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and 23 commercial banks, employs both fingerprint and facial recognition modalities with integrated liveness detection to verify customer identities during account creation and transactions.

The system serves as the technological foundation for Nigeria’s Bank Verification Number (BVN) project, which assigns each bank customer a unique identifier linked to their biometric data. This initiative, launched in 2014 as part of Nigeria’s broader financial inclusion strategy, builds upon the country’s earlier adoption of fingerprint verification systems in banking. The BVN framework implements a standardized biometric enrollment protocol across all participating financial institutions, requiring both fingerprint and facial captures to establish unique digital identities.

Since its introduction, the BVN system has identified and blocked over a million fraudulent identity attempts, demonstrating its effectiveness in securing financial transactions. This success comes at a time when digital fraud networks have become increasingly sophisticated, with recent industry research indicating that approximately one in every hundred users of digital platforms globally may be connected to fraud rings.

“Dermalog is proud to contribute to the modernization of Nigeria’s banking infrastructure,” said Gunther Mull, CEO of Dermalog. “Our biometric solutions provide robust security and convenience, ensuring trust in the financial system for millions of Nigerians.”

The implementation builds upon Dermalog’s established expertise in large-scale biometric systems, including their award-winning liveness detection technology that helps prevent spoofing attacks. The solution integrates with Nigeria’s existing electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) infrastructure, which has seen rapid adoption across the African financial sector.

Nigeria’s adoption of biometric technology represents one of Africa’s most comprehensive implementations of biometric banking security, positioning the country as a leader in leveraging advanced identity verification for financial inclusion and fraud prevention. The system’s architecture includes multiple layers of encryption and privacy protection measures, adhering to international standards for biometric data security and personal information protection.

Source: Digital More

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December 4, 2024 – by the ID Tech Editorial Team