DBS Bank supports SME open accounts in Singapore with selfie authentication

As such, DBS has announced that SME owners can now verify their identities with a facial recognition scan when signing up for a new account online. The feature is being developed through Singapore’s new SingPass Face Verification feature. SingPass is a national digital identity program in Singapore. The database for the Face Verification feature contains more than 4 million images pulled from passports and national identity cards.

DBS Bank integrated SingPass into its own digital banking app during a trial in July 2020 to give retail customers the opportunity to open accounts with facial recognition. The financial institution then followed that up with a separate trial for SMEs in November 2020, ahead of the formal rollout of the feature.

The face scans are intended to replace DBS’s former authentication protocol, which forced SMEs to remember and enter DBS digibank credentials to confirm an application.