No more queues at the bank: you can safely do all your transactions via a voice call!

We have all experieced the inconvenience of waiting lines, lengthy service time and inconvenient working hours of the banks. Just imagine all the time that you could save if you could make financial transactions from your cellphone just using your voice. No more need for dreadful manipulations with the bank-client apps which are so complicated that they make your head spin. Or even more, imagine that you can not only get the account balance but even finalize the transaction while you are on the transaction while you are on the phone with your agent or a broker. This innovation could make interaction with banks a much pleasurable experience.

A pleasant thing is that you do not have to memorize any paswords. Tou would be prompted on the screen of your phone with the text you are to read. And this is also dine with an exceptional accuracy level. The Voice biometric engine can deliver a false accept rate of 0.01% while maintaining overall false reject rates of less than 5%. 

Moreover, it benefits not only the customer: the advantages for the bank could be immense.  Studies show that such a system may increase the telephone deals closure rate by 20% and reduce the administrative costs related to the document printing and signing by as much as 80%. Sound tempting, but there is a catch: how do you make an non-conventional methods. VoiceVault, a Silicon Valley software development company has created an App for bots IOs and Android based cellphones that is currently deployed in 40 countries in the world including a top 3 US bank. The App provides both the user authentication and voice signing capabilities under the strictest standards out there.

So, are you guys convinced?

Its All in the Eyes

As Nato troops are pulling out of Afghanistan, a security vacuum is threatening to pull back Afghanastan under a state of anarchy. The Taliban, with their guerrilla tactics often go undetected and it is tough to identify who the enemy really is.

A biometric database has been created using retinal scans of all individuals/taliban previously arrested and imprisoned. These biometric scanners are then placed at all boarder crossings and government installations.  This biometric system has been successfull thus far; capturing a few hundred escaped taliban prisoners at boarder crossing.

If this technology is used responsibility and used in a scalable way; biometrics could be a key success in the war on terror

Cool Application of Biometrics in India

In the rapidly advancing world, the issue of security is becoming a more and more pressing matter. Computer crimes and identity theft related crimes are becoming more rampant and apparent, requiring better solutions to cope with them. One of the proposed methods for solution for future high-technology security issues lies in the field of biometrics. Although still in major phases of development, biometrics is seen as a highly valuable initiative to one day replace present day security authentication practices due to its ideal concept of being virtually risk free and non-inaccurate.

Recently, one of the cool applications of Biometrics Verification came up in India when this technology was used by country’s universal ID (UID) program, Project Aadhaar.

The Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Aadhaar program will provide identity cards for that nation’s 1.2 billion citizens. When it is completed, the UID system will process hundreds of thousands of identity validation requests each second, against the world’s largest database of individuals. The UID will use multiple types of biometric data for identification, including retina scans, fingerprints for all 10 fingers, and multiple facial images. It’s a huge project, with an estimated cost of US$2.2 to US$4.4 billion.

To ensure that each person gets one and only one Aadhaar number it is necessary that the resident’s identity information is captured and matched against every other resident (1:N check) who have previously enrolled - This process is called de-duplication.

The good thing was that the total biometric enrollment time for each individual, on average, was a little over three minutes. Of this, iris enrollment took a little under a minute, and was not perceived to be excessively difficult either by the resident or the enrolling operator. Specifically, many blind people also had their iris images captured successfully.

In a report titled 'The role of biometric technology in Aadhaar enrollment', the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) stated that use of biometric technology is flawless.

Times of India Article

Payments at your fingertips

PayTango is a fingerprint-based payments system, which would replace standard credit card terminals at retail stores. This enables incredibly fast, secure, and convenient payments for everyone. You don’t need a smartphone. You don’t need your wallet. All you need is your finger.

When a customer is ready to pay for her purchase, the PayTango terminal allows her to either swipe her card or use her finger to pay. If she is enrolled in PayTango, the system will recognize her fingerprint pull up all of her cards associated with that fingerprint in the system. Any card with a magnetic stripe can be registered in PayTango, including credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, and loyalty cards. Once she selects her payment instrument and confirms, the transaction is made.

Four founders of Pay Tango are Carnegie Mellon University students. They launched service in the university at first. For 100 students there, it takes only 4 hours to enroll them and it is working really well. They plan to expand their service to whole university, gym, and other commercial use.

In near future, we may not need any card to pay but only need my finger.

http://www.paytango.com/