Hoyos Labs, a digital infrastructure security company, today announced that it will demonstrate its new biometrics-based ATM that will eliminate the need for ATM cards and PINs at ATMIA on Feb. 17-19 in Las Vegas.
Banks can embed the Hoyos software into their respective mobile banking apps to seamlessly enable customers to use their biometrics – facial, periocular, fingerprint, iris – to access their bank accounts and withdraw money from them by simply looking at their phones to authenticate their identities.
This new banking app technology, built on the HoyosID identity assertion platform, operates without using Near Field Communications (NFC), significantly eliminating the risk of a user's financial information being stolen via proximity attacks. Most importantly, the technology does not store PINs, passwords or bank card numbers on smartphones at any time, so the probability of a person having his or her personal financial information stolen is slim to none.
Customers can download the mobile banking app on their phones to link the ATM with bank accounts – no additional hardware is needed. The HoyosID-enabled ATM software, which requires no retrofitting of ATMs, establishes a secure two-way SSL communication between the ATM and BOPS-compliant bank server. BOPS (Biometric Open Protocol Standard) was developed by Hoyos Labs and is an IEEE standard. BOPS comprises a set of rules that govern secure communications among a variety of client devices including mobile phones, desktop computers and ATMs, among others, and a trusted server managing the acquisition and manipulation of biometric data captured by those devices.
"Our technology will change the way that banks service customers, because people will no longer have to carry their bank cards or remember their PINs to safeguard their financial material and access their accounts," said Hector Hoyos, CEO of Hoyos Labs. "Every time that bank customers use ATMs, they are at risk to be skimmed, as 50 percent of ATM fraud now originates from cards that are skimmed at bank-owned ATMs. That figure is rising every year, and our new mobile app allows people to access their bank accounts and withdraw money by doing nothing more than taking a selfie to authenticate their identities."
To access the ATM, customers can use the app to scan a QR code that's displayed on the ATM screen to link the ATM with the smartphone and authenticate their identities. Once the identity has been verified, customers can access their accounts to withdraw money using the ATM or automatically get amounts of cash that have been queued up in the app beforehand. The app also utilizes a proprietary, unique, state-of-the-art "liveness" detection system that is capable of distinguishing a real person from an image or video – high-definition or standard.
"Two things are of paramount importance when it comes to financial transactions – privacy and convenience," continued Mr. Hoyos. "Using biometrics as a means of authentication ensures that you and only you are granted access to your bank records and authorized to make transactions and other uses of your financial accounts. On top of the government-level security that you're getting, it takes less than 30 seconds, from opening the app that lives on your smartphone to withdraw money from your account."