Thai banks to adopt palm and facial biometrics

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) plans to launch contactless palm vein recognition for customer identification and payment authentication. The bank is testing the technology in its own sandbox before an official roll-out, with installations to payment terminals, later in 2019. However, even though the central bank has not yet granted the required permission to operationalise the technology, it approved the use of fingerprint and facial biometrics for account openings.

Bank of Ayudhya (BAY) is planning to expand facial recognition as well. It already offers for opening new deposit accounts to payments, lending, and withdrawals for the next stage of its biometric adoption. Moreover, the bank is expected to launch biometric e-KYC for new account onboarding in Q4 of 2019, and is aiming for 10 to 15% of new accounts coming through the biometric capabilities of its mobile banking app.