Financial ID Briefing: Money Talks Down Under

The Financial ID Briefing brings you top highlights from the world of biometrics, mobile ID and finance. It is powered by FindBiometrics and Money20/20.

Samsung Pay Launches in UAE

Samsung Pay has come to the United Arab Emirates. Initially arriving via an early access program, Mastercard quickly announced its support for Samsung’s contactless mobile wallet in the region. As a mobile payments solution, Samsung Pay is notable for its biometric security features. Initially launching with fingerprint sensor support for transaction authentication, the recent integration of iris scanning on Samsung’s flagship Galaxy smartphones has brought multimodal flexibility to users who prefer to pay with their phones.

Sumitomo Mitsui’s Biometric Summer

Japanese financial institution Sumitomo Mitsui entered into a partnership with NTT Data and biometrics specialist Daon last autumn with the aim of developing a multimodal biometric banking app for its customers. Last week Sumitomo offered an update on the progress of its mobile app, stating that a full scale launch is planned for this summer.

The Sumitomo mobile app’s biometric security will be based on Daon’s Identity X platform, which has a strong reputation in the financial services arena. Multimodal and future-proof by nature, Identity X is behind the biometrics on USAA’s successful mobile banking app, which allows users to login via face, voice, or fingerprint recognition.

Money Talks Down Under

Australian bank ANZ is going to begin giving customers the option to authorize high-value transactions on mobile using voice biometrics. Traditionally, transactions valued at over $1000 have to be conducted online or in personal at a branch location, but this summer ANZ is using voice authentication to enable the process on mobile phones.

The voice authentication technology to be used in this deployment comes courtesy of Nuance Communications.

In a statement announcing the new biometric capabilities, Peter Dalton, ANZ’s managing director of Customer Experience and Digital Channels, said, “Voice biometrics is the next step in making banking more convenient for our customers while also strengthening security.”