Vietnamese Bank Triples Account Base After Issuing Fingerprint-enabled Debit Card for Unbanked

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."