OCBC Bank to push biometric POS to merchant customers

OCBC Bank to push biometric POS to merchant customers

Singapore's OCBC Bank is to offer merchants a fingerprint-based point of sale device capable of handling multiple payment form factors and loyalty schemes.

Developed by local technology company Touché, the platform is able to accept traditional card transactions as well as fingerprint-based payments and apply points and discounts to loyalty programme member accounts. Receipts are emailed - easing the reconciliation process and eliminating paper entirely.

A bespoke data analytics component also enables merchants to create personalised offers for customers based on their own preferences and buying patterns.

The company says the one-time registration process takes under two minutes wherein people can add their existing credit cards, loyalty/membership cards and link them to their fingerprints. Once registered, payments are completed in under four seconds at one touch, without the need for signature, pin number, card or mobile phone.

Desmond Tan, head of group lifestyle financing, OCBC Bank, says: "We are delighted to collaborate with Touché to be the first in Singapore to offer a fingerprint biometric payment solution to our cards acceptance merchant customers. This service enables an easy and secured platform that will improve the user experience for their customers. It will make digital e-payments simpler and more accessible than using cash, and will help to drive Singapore’s push towards becoming an e-payments society."

Comments: (2)

Harish Narayanan
Harish Narayanan - Emirates NBD - Dubai 23 May, 2018, 10:39Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Good move! One can only wonder why this didn't show up earlier.

Waiting for results.

Ketharaman Swaminathan
Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 23 May, 2018, 19:27Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Oh it showed up almost 20 years ago. In what's considered to be one of the most egregious examples of burning through capital, PayByTouch shut down after taking $175M in VC funds in the early 2000s. It's extremely hard to make a non-deterministic authentication method like fingerprint work in near real time at scale in a queue-based environment like instore checkout. Let's see how this goes.

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