Is the ‘liveness’ of biometric authentication the way forward?
With smart payments becoming the norm throughout South Africa, a new type of financial convenience is upon us, along with an increased risk of cybercrime and fraud.
Tap-to-pay services, including Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and proprietary banking apps that link smart devices with customers’ credit cards, have come to make up a large chunk of total transactions, especially for income earners.
As this trend continues, it’s important to consider the security measures that need to be in place to avoid a surge in online fraud.
Let’s take a look at contactless payments and the biometric identification systems being developed to keep customers safe.
Enjoying tap-to-pay. Preventing tap-to-steal
If you’ve noticed tap-to-pay terminals at your favourite shop recently, you’ve already witnessed one of the biggest trends sweeping banking across the country.
Contactless payments, made possible by the NFC technology found in modern smartphones, mean you no longer have to swipe or insert your card. You can simply tap your credit card or an enabled device linked to your account and pay within seconds.
Standard Bank appears to be leading the way in this regard, with more than 50% of transactions at the bank currently taking place through contactless means. A similar upward trend has been reported by Absa and Nedbank, though not to the same extent.
The convenience that contactless payments bring is easy to anticipate; customers no longer need to enter PINs or swipe cards, as they can use biometrics on smartphones to ensure that the transactions taking place are genuinely theirs.
Unfortunately, like many verification technologies, biometrics have already been faked by cybercriminals.
Is that really your face? False facial images can deceive Face ID
Just when you thought cybercriminals couldn’t get any smarter, some of them have figured out how to reproduce a human face to such an accurate degree that Face ID and similar verification systems can be fooled.
- In response to this threat, secure banking apps and other login credential verification systems are now requiring liveness verification, which can detect whether the face being used for identification belongs to a living, breathing human and matches the credentials for that specific account.
- If you’ve tried to verify your online banking app recently, you may have experienced this process firsthand.
- Multi-factor identification, including passwords, digital device tokens, and other methods to ensure that the account holder is logging in, have become the norm across the banking industry.
But while banking apps secure their login credentials, cybercriminals remain on the lookout for easy targets – including your sensitive business documents and client information.
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