Telebanking

Biometric authentication to prevent fraud in online banking transactions

By 11 de agosto de 2021septiembre 7th, 2021No Comments

Some time ago we used to see our grandparents, parents, or even ourselves, standing in long lines at the nearest bank branch to check how much money was in the account or make payments. Who would have imagined that years later all this would be as easy as a couple of clicks from the comfort of our homes? What the magic of digital transformation!

These electronic financial solutions represent a great advantage, but also great challenges, one of them being security. Especially in the last year, when the digitization of almost all activities has caused digital fraud attempts to increase up to 24% according to the latest research by TransUnion.  For this reason, banks are betting on new options such as biometric authentication systems to prevent fraud in online transactions.

Let’s talk about biometric authentication…

Users and passwords have long been the most efficient security measure, but this is no longer the case. There are more and more cases of stolen access credentials or even cloned card keys. This is when we turn to biometric authentication systems, which are more reliable, as they rely on biologically unique user data (fingerprint, voice, face) to verify identity, making it almost impossible for an attacker to carry out fraud.

There are several types of biometric authentication to prevent fraud in digital banking transactions:

  • Facial recognition: verifies a person’s identity by comparing a selfie with the photo of his or her official ID card.
  • Voice recognition: here the sound of the user’s voice is analyzed. Each person’s unique voice is determined by the length of their vocal tract and the shape of their nose, mouth, and larynx. All these factors make analyzing the user’s voice a strong method of authentication.
  • Document verification: A comparison is made with government IDs, driver’s licenses, and residence permits from around the world.

How is it done?

The implementation of biometric authentication is quite simple in general, as long as you have the necessary technologies and tools to implement them. For example, the case of Enghouse solution has a digital identity verification system thanks to the integration with Veridas.

In this way, contact center agents can perform secure banking processes and transactions through facial biometrics in video calls from the Vidyo platform or with voice recognition in calls while conversing with customers. All in a very natural way and so fast that it allows them to reduce by up to 25% the time loss of the traditional identification call process.

During this biometric authentication, several aspects will be guaranteed, among them that the customer is alive and that no impersonation is done by means of a photograph, a static image, or a voice recording. The process is short, takes only a few seconds, and is more than 99.9% accurate.

So you can use biometric authentication to prevent fraud in online banking transactions:

This technology can be a great ally in the fight against fraud in digital banking, in the same way, that it can contribute to the great improvement of operations and customer experience, as it allows the user to have a higher level of security in their relationship with the bank, as well as speed up the management of some procedures such as:

  1. Bank account opening: customers can open accounts remotely in minutes, eliminating the costs associated with manual processing.
  2. Payments: biometric authorization for online transactions.
  3. Credit card processing eliminates credit card fraud by verifying customers’ identity documents to ensure they are cardholders.
  4. Customer area login: users will be able to securely access banking platforms by authenticating themselves with a selfie.
  5. Mortgage applications: eliminating friction in mortgage application processes by authenticating documents online and complying with KYC requirements.
  6. Signing all types of electronic documents: users can quickly sign using their facial identity signature.
  7. Lending money: once authenticated, customers can apply for a loan securely for both (bank – customer).

In short, the implementation of biometric authentication to prevent fraud in online banking transactions has become a technological reality of the great impact on our society, improving processes and providing peace of mind to both financial institutions and customers that every day increase the need to digitize their activities.

If you want to know more about how the biometric authentication system works in the Enghouse solution, just click on the button.