Aussie banks ill-prepared for biometric security
Aussie banks ill-prepared for biometric security
December 1, 2004: Australian banks could find big problems with incorporating biometric technology to improve security at ATMs because many of the institutions have old legacy systems, which are incompatible.
Despite the current concerns over banking security, the introduction of biometric technology looks like a distant dream in Australia at the moment.
But this is not such an impossibility in other areas of the world. In a world first finger print scanners have been incorporated with ATMs in Columbia's Bancafe Bank, were customers simply place their finger on a reader at the ATM and enter an ID number to access their cash.
NCR Corporation implemented the technology into the Columbian banks.
Ron De Pasquale, the professional services partner for the South Pacific at NCR in Australia, explained why Australia cannot currently replicate this technological change.
"One of the problems of incorporating this technology into a matured market is because many of the banks in Australia use old legacy systems which are difficult to upgrade. There are over 25,000 ATMs in Australia and most of these do not run on Windows systems, so it is hard to scrap these machines and start from scratch.
"Over the next three to four years, I can't see the technology be used anywhere in Australia other than the lab, because it will take five years for the legacy hardware to be replaced.
The other major stumbling block he mentioned involved social issues.
"I think it would also be very difficult to persuade customers to have their iris' scanned and finger prints recorded for this purpose. I believe that the public acceptance level would be very low in Australia too."
The technology has enabled Bancafe in Columbia to reach new customers, such as the country's small coffee growers who were previously reluctant to open a bank account.
According to Pasquale, there does not look like any major reason for Australian banks to make a switch to biometric technology because they have higher priorities to deal with at the moment. However, he does believe that the next logical step will probably involve integrating chips onto customer cards first.
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