Malaysia's MayBank is betting big on biometrics to replace password logins, adding facial and voice recognition to its fingerprint-protected mobile app.
Together with the 'Quick Touch' fingerprint service launched in 2015, the Malasian bank has now rolled out facial and voice recognition capabilites as options to its Maybank2u app.
The move comes as the bank reports a 95% growth rate in mobile transactions over the first ten months of this year, racking up 60 million user log-ins per month.
By the end of 2017, more than 1 billion mobile transactions would have passed through the Maybank2u digital system with a value of more than RM22 billion, says Maybank head of community financial services Datuk Hamirullah Boorhan.
“Given this large traction in mobile transactions, we felt it was critical to enhance our customer experience by offering our users speedier access to their accounts,” he explains. “To this end we have invested in these latest innovations for mobile devices in line with our commitment to leverage on cutting edge technology as well as our strategic objective of being the digital bank of choice.”
The new biometric features currently allow customers to access their accounts and check their balances via the Maybank app, with any further transactions requiring login with passwords dor multi-factor authentication. Hamirullah says the bank aims to progressively increase the capabilities of the new biometrics to allow customers to authorise transactions in the future.