DBS Offers Facial Recognition For SMB Customers

Small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners in Singapore will now be able to use facial recognition to access their DBS Bank accounts, per a report from The Straits Times.

To use the software, called SingPass Face Verification, users will just have to face a camera and have their information verified.

Before this, business owners who qualified for straight-through processing would have to manually enter in their information while setting up a corporate account, creating the risk of users forgetting their passwords.

DBS first introduced the idea in a pilot for SMB account opening in November, the report says, and has had over 100 customers using its services since then. The bank plans to offer SingPass as an option for all qualifying applications from Tuesday (Feb. 23) onward, and customers will be able to access their corporate accounts online around 20 minutes after applying.

SingPass Face Verification allows for images to be captured and matched against the national biometric database, which the report says contains the facial images and identities for people 15 years or older, captured for passports and NRICs. Thus far its use was for official purposes, including verification at border checkpoints and to limit access in some government buildings, the report says.

Using the program, private sector organizations can tap the country’s digital identity infrastructure and securely verify online transactions.

Facial IDs have become a deterrent to the surge in unwanted transactions and fraud. According to identity verification firm Jumio’s 2020 Holiday Fraud Report, it could be as simple as fraudsters not wanting to provide their real face — and thus, a lot of fraud could be stopped in its tracks. The difference comes from companies knowing how to operate the tech. One measure could be implementing “liveness checks” to make sure a real person is actually sitting in front of the computer.

The comfort the general public has with facial IDs and other technology such as thumbprint IDs has grown in recent years.