Singapore’s OCBC Bank has recently introduced facial biometric for ATM services that allow users access to ATM services using face verification and no need to carry an ATM card.
The service is currently available at eight selected ATMs namely, OCBC Tampines Centre Two, Taman Jurong Shopping Centre, Great Eastern, Pickering Street, OCBC Tampines Centre One, HDB Hub Level 1, 103 Yishun Ring Road, OCBC Campus, and Geylang Road 7-Eleven.
Moreover, the bank will extend this face verification for cash withdrawals to all of its 550 ATMs in Singapore starting June and various transactions such as cash deposits, funds transfers, and credit card top-ups will be available next year.
“Singapore consumers are keen digital adopters, even the elderly,” said Sunny Quek, OCBC Bank’s head of consumer financial services in Singapore. While cash is still a key mode of payment in Singapore, the digital overlay to get cash is very much welcomed by consumers.”
He also added that digital adoption within OCBC has grown year-on-year in 2020, with more than 40% of customers signed up on PayNow, which allows users to send or receive money using ID numbers, mobile numbers, or a quick response (QR) code.
PayNow transactions doubled in 2020 compared to 2019, OCBC said.
OCBC, the first lender in Southeast Asia to introduce facial biometrics to its ATMs said this is a step closer to eliminating ATM cards which can be easily stolen or skimmed.
Kanv Pandit, group managing director for banking solutions in the Asia Pacific at FIS, said, “Singapore residents have now become more comfortable with biometric authentication methods such as fingerprint and face recognition which have become the new normal”.
“This is unsurprising as consumers cement their preferences for a quicker, more convenient and contactless experience when it comes to banking or paying, especially during the pandemic,” added Pandit. “As long as cash continues to fill consumers’ needs, ATMs remain a critical delivery channel in Singapore. While in no danger of disappearing, ATMs must evolve to address challenges such as fraud particularly skimming.”
Sunny Quek, OCBC's consumer financial services head, said, "With many customers already embracing QR cash withdrawals without having to use an ATM card, face verification will add a layer of convenience to more customers as they access our banking touchpoints".
“Biometric authentication such as fingerprint or face recognition relies on attributes of your identity that are a lot less likely to be compromised. This helps banks ensure that the authorised account holder is the one making the withdrawals," explained Pandit.
Jeffrey Kok, vice-president of solution engineers at CyberArk for Asia-Pacific and Japan, noted, “ATMs are a great use case for facial verification and recognition technology. The technology increases usability, convenience and adopts a very modern approach to address a legacy problem”. With this technology, scammers will find it harder to ‘copy’ someone’s identity.
“Facial verification removes many avenues of attack and improves security while making a better experience for the end-user,” added Kok.
Along with OCBC, DBS Bank said its customers have used the SingPass Face Verification feature to apply for digital bank accounts since July 2020. Shee Tse Koon, Singapore country head of DBS Bank, said, “This has proven to be popular as our retail customers can apply for digibank access in less than three minutes while corporate customers can access their new corporate accounts online in about 20 minutes from the point of application”. "DBS will continue to explore ways to expand the use of face verification and emerging technologies in our digital services and self-service machines," he added.
Janet Young, UOB’s head of group channels and digitalisation, does not favour the face verification feature. “Amid the prolonged pandemic, our customers’ safety is our priority. To use facial recognition at ATMs means that customers have to remove their masks in public to scan their faces,” said Young. “We will continue to study the needs and preferences of our customers to provide them with a safe, reliable, and relevant banking experience always.”
Young added that almost all of the bank’s ATMs are contactless at the moment. Customers can easily make cash withdrawals without an ATM card by adding their bank cards to their mobile phone’s banking app and tap their devices on the ATMs before entering the PIN.
However, to use the face verification services at an OCBC Bank ATM, customers can select the ATM service that they want before entering their National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) number on the ATM screen.
One will be prompted to position his or her face within a frame on the screen while an especially enabled web camera takes a scan of their face and verifies in real-time. The scanned image is then matched against the national biometric database, to which OCBC Bank’s ATM network is digitally linked to.
After the facial scan is verified, customers can proceed with their ATM transactions. Feixiang He, senior threat intelligence analyst at Singapore-based cyber-security company Group-IB, said, "PINs could be defeated by ever-growing phishing attacks. Physical bank cards can be stolen. The biometric features are generally viewed to be harder to abuse than knowledge and ownership factors”.
"The combination of NRIC and facial recognition provides a two-factor authentication which further improves the security," added Feixiang.
"As biometric technology advances, so do the attackers' levels of sophistication as they develop new social engineering and attack vectors. However, this risk can be mitigated by our strong law enforcement measures, the surveillance methods that protect our ATM infrastructure, and public education which serve as very strong deterrents," shared Kok.
OCBC said that it has measures to protect its customers and ATM transactions through CCTV footage, remote CCTV viewing, and video analytics.
However, this new feature drew mixed reactions from OCBC Bank customers.