Get ready to use your fingerprints to make bank withdrawals
USING a PIN for cash withdrawals and credit card transactions will soon seem as old-fashioned as signing your name.The Payments Association of SA has announced a new standard for biometric authentication‚ which will mean fingerprints‚ palms‚ voices‚ irises and even faces can be used to identify cardholders at any bank or shop.But the association says it has no plans to force businesses to use the technology‚ and none of the big banks has plans to use biometrics.Association CEO Walter Volker said the new standard meant biometric systems would not be limited to individual vendors."Through this interoperable biometric verification standard in SA‚ we can connect a complicated web of players who operate with different rules and technologies." said Mark Elliott‚ the head of MasterCard SA, which joined Visa to work on the new standard with the payments association.Payments authentication has progressed from signatures to PINs‚ to chip-and-PIN cards‚ and Volker said fingerprints would be ne...
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