Temenos announced the launch of Vietnam's first
fingerprint-enabled debit card, at Mekong Development Bank. The bank’s hopes to
entice the unbanked with this card, which is fingerprint enabled, is already
paying dividends.
Fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults do not use formal or
semiformal financial institutions to save or borrow money, according to
McKinsey Quarterly. Nearly 2.2 billion of these unserved adults live in Africa,
Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Unserved, however, does not mean
unservable. Mekong Development Bank implemented Temenos T24 Biometric
fingerprint authentication to provide the 'unbanked' population of Vietnam with
access to banking services.
Since the initial launch in June, Mekong Development Bank's
current account base has tripled, and the deposit balance per debit card
account is two times higher than a regular account without a debit card.
Customer fingerprints will be captured by Mekong Development Bank at the point
of opening an account - and then used at any one of 33 NCR SelfServ™ ATMs across Vietnam. This will be extended to
other touch points in the near future in line
with Mekong Development Bank's proposition to make things simple for the
customer.
The financial institution made a simple modular upgrade to
incorporate biometrics to its T24 enterprise system. Mike van der Wal, managing
director of NCR in Southeast Asia, comments: "More than half the world's
population - concentrated in developing markets such as Vietnam – does not
access formal banking services. Mekong Development Bank's biometric NCR ATMs,
which identify consumers by their fingerprint in place of a personal
identification number, represent a major step forward in bringing banking
services to the entire population of Vietnam. Mekong Development Bank's
customers can now enjoy convenient access with increased security."
