South Africa’s Standard Bank has introduced biometrics as the bank has updated its application with fingerprint technology. The bank’s iPhone and iPad users with device fingerprint readers were recently upgraded to use the hardware to log on to the banking application. The bank plans to roll out this feature to biometrically-enabled Android phones in the near future, said Magnus Taljaard, head of Mobile Banking. In South Africa, Samsung and Huawei are the only other brands that offer fingerprint access. In case not all customers are ready to make the jump to biometric banking, the traditional PIN will continue to be available and features such as adding beneficiaries will demand additional security on the application. While biometric ATMs are already available in Brazil and Kenya, the technology has also been used successfully to manage elections in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Nigeria.
