Barclays introduces finger scanner to fight banking fraud

The bank has teamed up with Japanese technology company 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.

According to Barclays, its vein authentication technology will be rolled out to corporate customers in 2015. The vein pattern is matched with one stored on a SIM card, so Barclays does not hold a record. The scanned finger has to be attached to a live human body to work.

UK’s private companies lost GBP 21 billion (USD 34.5 billion) from fraud in 2012 and financial companies suffered GBP 5.4 billion of that, according to a report by the National Fraud Authority.

In recent news, Barclays has launched a mobile payment service between India and the UK, which enables Barclays customers and even non-Barclays customers to transfer money.