Standard Bank debuts South Africa’s first Biometric Banking App feature

Standard bank has launched South Africa’s first Biometric mobile banking solution for clients. The new feature enables you to sign into the bank’s app via iPhone or iPad, using Apple’s TouchID technology.

Now that there is an upgrade to the app, customers with Touch ID enabled on their smartphones and tablets have an option of using Apple’s fingerprint identity sensor in order to sign in their accounts.

According to Standard Bank, the feature is designed to make banking easier and safer for customers. “Our customers’ security is of the utmost importance to us,” says Standard Bank mobile banking head Magnus Taljaard. “The new biometric identification feature therefore underwent rigorous testing so that we could ensure a safe and robust solution for our customers. The ability to sign in using the fingerprint sensor is also combined with an additional security layer for certain transactions, for example when paying a new beneficiary.”

That degree of caution may well be necessary given that Standard Bank has been the victim of hacking attacks in the past.

Read more: Africa’s mobile banking apps are a serious weapon in their war against the telcos

Biometric technology is however playing an increasingly important role in the South African banking sector. Several South African banks have introduced the fingerprint readers inside branches for authentication purposes. NedBank’s pilot branches launched biometric access control, and the Home Affairs have also introduced online fingerprint verification.

Juniper Research, meanwhile says that the number of apps using biometric authentication is set to explode. According to the tech research house, global downloads of the biometric enabled apps will reach the 6-million mark this year. This figure is said to increase to more than 770 million downloads by 2019.

Since the bank launched its third generation smartphone app, it says, up to 65 000 customers have registered. Over the past 10 months, value transactions processed through the app doubled to more than R10 billion per month. This just shows that the new banking app has been an integral part of customers lives.