Turkey's Akbank is reporting that 250,000 customers have signed up to use facial recognition technology as a means to unlock their mobile baking app.
With the roll out, Akbank lays claim to being the first bank in Turkey to deploy facial recognition technology. The bank is using Daon's IdentityX platform, which has been incorporated by both Visa and Mastercard and is installed at a number of banks across the world.
Daon worked with NTT Data based in Turkey to deploy IdentityX at the bank. A nationwide marketing campaign drove up user registration.
“Nearly 250,000 of Akbank’s mobile banking users opted-in to use the facial recognition technology almost immediately, says Tom Grissen, CEO, Daon. “This is one of the fastest-growing user adoptions we have seen globally.
Turks are enthusiastic adopters of mobile financial services. Some 56% of Turks have used a mobile payment app, which is more than double the rate of France and Germany, according to a study by ING.
Widespread uptake of Apple's TouchID fingerprint sensor appears to be allaying consumer fears about other biometric form factors. Just Yesterday Lloyds Banking Group followed the lead of Barclays and HSBC in deploying voice recognition technology to authenticate customers phoning in to its call centres.