Page 54 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Technology, innovation and competition

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Technology, Innovation and Competition

ensure that the person who registered and passed the KYC checks is the person who uses the card. This was
further evidenced by the announcement that the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA), in partnership
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with Visa and Mastercard, is seeking to introduce biometric authentication of payment cards in South Africa.

3.2.2 Smartcards

Smartcards are widely recognised as a robust solution for authentication, however widespread use within
DFS is limited by the ubiquity and reliability of the acceptance network. In markets where card acceptance
infrastructure is not well developed, the additional costs associated with issuing devices to agents and then
training them how to use them can also create a barrier.

Examples : Nigeria eID card 1

1 http:// www. nimc. gov. ng/

3.2.3 Biometrics

Biometrics is an umbrella term for a set of complex technologies that seek to identity individual people by
their physical or behavioural characteristics for the purpose of identification or authentication/service access.
The different biometric technologies have varying strengths and weaknesses, and an important aspect of their
use is the selection of an appropriate biometric for the intended purpose.

A biometric measurement is expressed in a computer system as a biometric template, or profile, which is a
statistical analysis of the measurement, resulting in a specific reduced data set that can be used to represent
the physical characteristics or features of an individual. It is important to emphasise that, for example, a
fingerprint template is not the same as a fingerprint.

In all cases, biometric technologies are easy to use badly (often giving a sense of security that isn’t really
there), and difficult to use well.

3.2.3.1 Why biometrics?

Biometrics is a subject of particular relevance to financial inclusion in general, and DFS in particular. It has the
potential to fulfil the basic need for customer authentication when accessing services, and overcomes two of
the main shortcomings of the more conventional PIN, as described above.

For these reasons, and in view of the increasing sophistication and reliability of biometrics as the technologies
advance, it is likely that biometric technologies will form an increasingly significant part of financial services
offerings not just in the emerging economies, but in the industrialised world as well. This is despite the
complexities and potential misgivings highlighted in this document.

3.2.3.2 Complexities
Biometric technologies are often regarded as a magic bullet. Unfortunately, this is not the case – they are a
set of highly complex technologies, which need careful management if they are to be effective. The principle
issues are:

• Registration: It can be difficult to successfully register people, if the equipment is less than perfect, the
environmental conditions are less than ideal, or if the selected biometric is inappropriate for the people
being registered. The result can be poor quality registrations, which cannot be used to reliably, or robustly,

11 http:// www. fin24. com/ Tech/ Companies/ fingerprint- authentication- coming- to- sa- bank- cards- 20160726? isapp= true

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