The video says it all: “En Baco Santander mi voz es mi firm.” This translates into: “At Banco Santander, my voice is my signature.” It refers to the phrase that 19,000 former firefighters and police who are members of the government pension program can use to prove their eligibility to receive transfer payments over the phone, rather than having to appear at a government office or bank branch, under a program called Viva Voz, the product of a partnership between the bank and city government to deploy Nuance’s VocalPassword(tm) in a way that conforms to the government’s “proof of life” strictures

The video highlights the convenience that such an approach provides for individuals who have physical conditions or other constraints that make it difficult to make a trek to the pension office every six months. Yet Opus Research has long thought that strong, remote authentication is crucial for the fraud prevention strategies of dozens of government agencies as they pursue so-called “e-government” strategies, whereby online or phone-based resources replace traditional, brick-and-mortar bureaus or offices. In Mexico, as the video notes, banking authorities have come to regard voice biometrics as “the most secure choice for accessing the banks’ electronic services.

The 19,000 pensioners in Mexico City represent a very small fraction of the hundreds of millions of private and public pensioners who could benefit from taking a phone-based approach to asserting eligibility to receive payments. As this, and similar technological approaches, prove reliability and ability to scale, ramp up to large numbers of enrolled users will be dramatic. Convenience, coupled with the financial incentive, should prove irresistible.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Authentication, Articles

Tags: Nuance, voice authentication, proof-of-life, e-government, Voice biometrics