Financial institutions could improve security, reduce costs and enhance the customer experience by replacing the password with integrated biometric solutions.

Dupont, Wash.-based America’s Credit Union, for example, integrated omnichannel digital banking provider Access Softek‘s biometric solution to its platform to replace the password, an Access Softek spokesperson told Bank Automation News.

“We think that the password is an enormous security problem,” Access Softek founder and Chief Executive Chris Doner told BAN, noting that bank passwords are often forgotten, shared, cracked or breached. “There are all sorts of ways in which a nefarious individual can get your password.”

Access Softek’s solution offers “a unified, integrated biometric solution so that you can log into your mobile banking [app] with your finger or face,” Doner said. The capabilities also extend to authentication in the call center, where clients can skip a questionnaire and instead hold their phone up to their own face for identity verification.

The addition of biometric authentication solutions in the call center allows financial institutions to save money on verification costs, as banks recognize that “the single most expensive feature to support inside of online banking is authentication,” he added.

Killing the password

The shift away from passwords “is a really significant trend in the industry,” Doner said.

How to speed the move toward biometric authentication? FIs can implement incentives that drive clients toward adopting the new security process, he said.

For example, a client looking to transfer money after logging in with a password might face a limit of $1,000, as opposed to one who logs in biometrically, which allows for more security and less risk, and therefore a higher transfer limit.

“That creates a real incentive for people to stop using their password and start switching to the biometric,” Doner said, noting, “As an industry we need to kill the password.”

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