Barclays is launching a finger scanner for corporate clients and will roll out voice recognition for millions of retail clients next year as it steps up use of biometric recognition technology to combat banking fraud. The bank said it has teamed up with Hitachi to develop a biometric reader that scans a finger and identifies unique vein patterns to access accounts, instead of using a password or PIN. Vein recognition technology is used by some banks in Japan and elsewhere at ATM machines, but Barclays said it is the first bank globally to use it for significant account transactions. The bank said it is the start of a ramp up in its use of biometrics to provide safer verification systems that cut fraud risks from customers sharing or choosing obvious passwords, or forgetting PINs. Ashok Vaswani, chief executive of Barclays personal and corporate banking said biometrics is the way to go in the future and the bank has no doubt about that and it is committed to it. He added that Barclays was improving technology and security, but criminals were also getting more sophisticated.
