Reviews and ratings for biometrics at credit unions continue to show overwhelmingly positive results whether used to authenticate members at branches or on mobile devices, or employees logging in to workstations.
Fiserv’s Verifast, Palm Authentication technology integrates Fujitsu palm-vein biometrics to improve operational efficiency. In addition, credit unions employing the technology also seek to consolidate and restructure employee identification, allowing them to focus more on member engagement.
“Most of biometrics are member facing,” Chris Van Der Stad, SVP/chief technology officer, Open Solutions for Fiserv, noted. According to the Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv, palm biometrics historically reduced member authentication time by 93%.
In this use case though Fiserv’s Verifast, Palm Authentication specifically deals with the multiple credentials staff needs to access applications to perform their jobs by automating authentication through the palm biometric option.
Van Der Stad added, what they’re finding is the number of times many employees sign on in a given day, and the number of different applications they are required to do their job, is higher than they thought. “We’re looking to provide them some efficient, productivity gains but also provide them some security of the application.”
The non-disruptive process uses a mouse equipped with a palm reader to detect each employee’s palm-vein pattern as they lay their hand on the device. “When a person runs an application for the first time in a given day it captures the palm readings for authentication. If the person times out then it re-authenticates that person,” Van Der Stad noted.
The solution is pre-configurable for Fiserv products but it comes with a development tool to also connect to non-Fiserv products as well. “The goal is to build an experience that uses the biometrics across all applications regardless of who provides those applications,” Van Der Stad said.
Like many credit unions, the $442.5 million Odessa, Texas-based Complex Community FCU uses a number of vendors, and therefore employees encounter numerous logins and passwords. When Fiserv presented an opportunity to streamline the process the credit union jumped at the opportunity.
Today, authentication by biometric verification is becoming more common in consumer electronic devices, security systems, and ATM/point-of-sale applications. However, its applicability as a method of authentication in mobile banking and payments helped it gain momentum.
Another fintech company on the biometric technology, NCR, has seen biometrics take off with mobile banking. “Our biometric story has really caught a gravy train,” Dan Weis, NCR’s mobile product leader. NCR offers three financial biometrics solutions to make its mobile banking app easier to use – Apple Touch ID, Android Fingerprint ID, and EyeVerify’s Eyeprint ID.
See the full story in the print edition of CUTimes on June 21.
