Banks Eyeball Sci-Fi Style Identification for ATMs

Biometric identification, a process formerly seen only in futuristic movies and high-security government offices, may soon become part of the most common consumer banking transactions.

Bankers' interest in biometric ID - a sophisticated antifraud measure that exploits the fact that every human possesses unique physical characteristics - dates back more than a decade.

But until recently most banks and equipment manufacturers have watched the development of technology that recognizes fingerprints, voices, and other personal traits from a distance.

That has begun to change, experts said. One of the companies leading the charge toward everyday use of biometric identification in banking is Sensar Inc., a Princeton, N.J.-based company that is developing an automated teller machine application for its patented Iriscan process.

In a nutshell, the company's product, to be sold under the name Irisident, is being designed to capture an image of a consumer's eye and match it to an image on file before authorizing an ATM transaction.

"The research that's been done with consumers indicates they like the idea of having biometric verification - it gives them a feeling of greater security," said Liam Carmody, a principal with the Ridgewood, N.J.-based consulting firm Carmody & Bloom. "But they don't want intrusive verification."

Sensar officials understand that the use of the eye as an identification tool is likely to meet with skepticism from some bankers, who wonder whether consumers will rebel against it.

However, they said their ATM application - which should be available in prototype in the next few months - is being designed to address the consumer concerns. And they insist that Irisident products will be of practical use to bankers.

"We are operating under the assumption that the consumer is not going to put his eye up to something to be scanned," said Kevin McQuade, vice president of strategic business development at Sensar.

"The breakthrough here is the ability to obtain the image of the eye unintrusively," said Thomas Drury, president and chief executive of Sensar, which is a unit of the David Sarnoff Research Center Inc., also based in Princeton.

Several influential companies have committed money to the development of an ATM application for Sensar's technology, including Huntington Bancshares Inc., OKI Electric Industry Ltd., and a money-center bank that does not want to be identified.

Though the bankers declined to discuss their investment in the project, OKI Electric has committed a minimum of $25.8 million for development funding in return for the exclusive rights to market the products in Japan, where the Tokyo-based company is the leading vendor of ATMs.

Experts said this support shows that the financial services industry is looking for alternatives to the personal identification numbers and computer passwords that have been compromised with increasing frequency in recent years.

The choices are many, and include fingerprints, on-line signature verification, and even the measurement of facial thermal zones.

"Bankers are interested in alternatives to the PIN," said V. John Stroia, a marketing manager with Diebold, Canton, Ohio. Diebold and IBM operate an ATM joint venture known as InterBold.

"The major barrier is not so much the technology as getting the customer acclimated to" using biometric technologies. But, he added, capturing sensitive biometric data - such as that from the eye or face - "is going to have to be covertly done."

InterBold has some experience in this area. The company has installed fingerprint recognition equipment at the ATMs of a South African bank, and it has demonstrated retina recognition technology at several banking industry forums.

As Mr. Drury and Mr. McQuade indicated, they are aware that biometrics may meet with some consumer resistance. For this reason, the Sensar system uses defense department technology to locate a person's eye and capture an image from about three feet away.

When the ATM user initiates the ATM transaction by inserting a card into the self-service terminal, the scanned image is compared against a master file of authorized images.

If smart cards gain the acceptance they are expected to, the computer chips on these can be used to store the master image of the eye. This could dramatically simplify the data storage and communications requirements of biometric identification.

"Right now the file associated with any kind of biometric is pretty large, so if you're going to be storing that at a central site, that's a lot of information to be going over your communications lines," said Mr. Stroia. "Smart cards or chip cards could definitely help this."

Since few experts expect widespread consumer acceptance of smart cards for several years, the back-office issues could slow the acceptance of biometric identification.

Sensar executives said a data base of 200 million images can be searched in about five seconds, but bankers still would be concerned about the cost of sending those images up to 6,000 times per day to ATMs.

So why are bankers interested in the Iriscan technology now? Sensar executives have at least one answer.

With the emergence of remote banking, financial institutions have fewer and fewer opportunities to meet customers face to face. As banking through personal computers, phones, and televisions becomes more common, physical contact becomes even less common.

William M. Randle, a senior vice president with Huntington Bancshares in Columbus, Ohio, said the increased use of remote banking demands a technology that "shows proof-positive that you are talking to the right person." Mr. Randle and others believe that iris scans offer a good way to achieve this. Huntington plans to test the Sensar technology at some ATMs during the first quarter of 1996.

According to Sensar executives, the eye is one of the most unique parts of the human body and the iris biometric more reliable than virtually any other, including fingerprints and voice.

Voices change over the course of a life, and fingerprints sometimes disappear on people who work with their hands.

By contrast, the iris, which is the colored area of the eye, is stable throughout a lifetime. They are thoroughly unique and naturally visible.

In a test of the Iriscan technology in January, Sensar had only one verification error in almost 1,999 attempts. The data base for this trial consisted of 465 images, and the one error occurred because a subject was wearing dirty eyeglasses.

Though the future of this particular biometric is far from certain, bankers and observers said the prospect is good for iris scan technology to migrate to other platforms, assuming the ATM trials work out.

Of particular interest are home banking applications. With the advent of video conferencing, many PCs may soon be equipped with cameras. Sensar officials said it is not too much of a stretch to use these cameras to capture images of the eye.

The true test of the technology will obviously not come until a bank starts using it. However, the bank interest in iris scans and other biometrics suggests that the technologies are closer than ever to becoming a part of the life of the average consumer.

"People are taking this seriously, and I think that's a function of the convergence and the perfection of these types of technologies with the growing acceptance and reality of smart cards," said Mr. Carmody.

"When those two come together, a lot of new things will be possible."

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