Goodbye ATM cards? OCBC to roll out face verification at ATMs

SINGAPORE — Forgot to bring your OCBC ATM card? You will soon be able to check your bank account balances or withdraw cash by scanning your face at the bank’s ATMs.

In an announcement on Thursday (March 18), OCBC said it will be enabling face verification for bank transactions at its ATMs.

This roll-out of facial biometrics for ATM services will start off with account balance enquiries at eight selected ATMs from Friday.

They are located at:

• OCBC Tampines Centre Two
• Taman Jurong Shopping Centre
• Great Eastern, Pickering Street
• OCBC Tampines Centre One
• HDB Hub Level 1
• 103 Yishun Ring Road
• OCBC Campus
• Geylang Road 7-Eleven

OCBC said it will extend face verification for cash withdrawals to all of its 550 ATMs in Singapore “progressively” from June.

It also has plans to do the same for other ATM transactions, including cash deposits, fund transfers to other banks, cash card top-ups and credit card bill payments, from next year.

Despite the push in digital banking, OCBC said ATM usage remains high, with more than two million cash withdrawals monthly.

Account balance enquiries and cash withdrawals are the most popular ATM services, making up close to eight in 10 ATM transactions performed by its customers.

Face verification will remove the need for customers to carry their ATMs cards around, and is also a “secure alternative” to physical ATM cards, the bank said in its media release.

OCBC is tapping on SingPass Face Verification, a national digital identity infrastructure, to verify customers for banking transactions at its ATMs.

To enable face verification at an OCBC ATM, account holders will first select their preferred ATM service before entering their NRIC number on the screen.

They will then be prompted to position their face within a frame on the screen, while a specially installed web-enabled camera will take a scan of their face.

Verification is then done in real time against the national biometric database, which contains the facial images and identities of four million Singapore residents.

Once the facial scan is verified, customers will be able to proceed with their ATM transaction.

Security features are also in place to prevent fraud, such as liveness-detection technology to detect and block the use of photographs, videos, or masks during the verification process, OCBC said.

This is not the bank’s first time leveraging the national digital identity infrastructure.

It did so last year when it allowed customers to use their SingPass to access digital banking services. 

Within six months, more than one million logins to the bank’s digital banking platforms were performed using SingPass, in place of traditional access codes and PINs.

In July 2019, it also allowed customers to withdraw cash by scanning a QR code. Last year, the number of QR-code cash withdrawals rose 88 per cent from the same period a year ago.

Overall, the bank saw growth in digital adoption among its customers last year, with more than 40 per cent more people signing up for PayNow. PayNow transactions also doubled compared to 2019.

“Singapore consumers are keen digital adopters ... While cash is still a key mode of payment in Singapore, the digital overlay to get cash is very welcomed by consumers,” said OCBC’s head of consumer financial services Sunny Quek.

“With many customers already embracing QR cash withdrawals without having to use an ATM card, face verification will add a layer of convenience to more customers as they access our banking touchpoints.” 

Mr Shee Tse Koon, the country head at DBS Singapore said that at DBS, said that customers have been benefitting from the convenience of facial verification technology since July 2020.

“From retail to SME account opening, clients have been using the SingPass Face Verification feature to apply for their digital bank accounts. This has proven to be popular as our retail customers can apply for digibank access in less than three minutes while corporate customers can access their new corporate accounts online in about 20 minutes from the point of application,” he added. 

Mr Shee said that to date, more than 25,000 customers have used the SingPass Face Verification, with most of them using the feature to securely retrieve their digibank user credentials.

He added that as an organisation that is at the forefront of digital banking, DBS will continue to explore ways to expand the use of face verification and emerging technologies in its digital services and self-service machines. CNA

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