Biometrics

The voice biometrics firm Pindrop closed on its Series D fund raising round with $90 million in new capital to fuel expansion in voice authentication and security services for call centers and internet of things devices. It also added a new CFO and CRO.

As payment stakeholders show an interest in using fingerprint technology to improve identity protection, NEXT Biometrics and MK Group plan to collaborate on biometric smart cards for banking and other applications.

Intesa Sanpaolo will be testing a new biometric contactless Mastercard in Italy, leveraging technology from Sweden-based Fingerprints AB.

Everyday we’re opening the door to new services, devices and institutions, trading off a little bit of “us” for greater convenience, writes Lina Andolf-Orup, a global product marketing manager at Fingerprints.

Christian Sewing calls out the German bank's senior managers for using rumors of a merger with Commerzbank to excuse poor performance; banks in China begin using smartphones to pick up on lie-detecting facial tics.

Societe Generale launched a contactless biometric payment trial in France for a debit card with a built-in fingerprint reader.

Payment and banking apps are deploying passwordless experiences for convenience and some degree of improved security ahead of a goal to eliminate passwords from the authentication process altogether. We should not, however, conflate passwordless experiences with system architecture where there is no password in use, writes George Avetisov, CEO of HYPR.

Visa showcased payment technologies it’s developing for future Olympic games, including in-home “couch commerce” leveraging augmented reality.

The potential for voice payments is massive and drawing significant attention from developers. But limited use suggests it's not ready for prime time.

Sourcemedia's annual PayThink conference is always productive and informative, and this year's event was no exception.

Visa, Mountain America Credit Union and Fingerprints AB were thrilled with their biometric card test, but also faced the grim realization that real world infrastructure may not be as accommodating.

The Face Login will enable users of the Paytm payment platform to log into the app simply by looking into their phones, a move designed to add a biometric layer to prevent phishing attacks.

Digital ID platform developers are competing to sign up partners to deploy their technologies to replace vulnerable usernames and passwords with a single sign-in. The challenge is to sign up a sufficient volume of partners to make these platforms attractive for consumers and businesses.

The advent of Faster Payments services plus Europe’s PSD2 have heightened concerns among banks about increased fraud risks. This has created opportunities for firms such as New York/Israel’s BioCatch and San Francisco’s BehavioSec, both of which develop technology around behavioral biometrics analysis.

Despite recent scrutiny of mobile point of sale devices, the mobile payments category as a whole has generally carried a promise of initiating a safer transaction through the use of biometrics, device ID, geolocation and other factors.

To date, payments companies have feared common biometric methods such as fingerprint or iris scanning are unreliable and susceptible to hacking. However, there’s growing evidence that finger vein ID could prove more palatable.

"Banks should be investing in innovation in this area or risk getting left behind," a fintech CEO warns.

U.S. Bank is firmly committed to voice assistant technology, but remains cautious about enabling all forms of money movement via verbal commands.

Seeking to bolster digital identity and transaction security at the world's largest banks, OneSpan is partnering with Nok Nok Labs to provide authentication for mobile and online accounts, favoring biometrics or other technologies over static passwords.

Once companies can recognize their customers without constantly asking security questions, they can shower them with benefits to enhance the shopping experience while bolstering their brand, writes Robert Capps, vice president at NuData Security, a Mastercard company.