As VBC New York approaches, we’re pleased to see that voice biometrics-based solutions are gaining greater visibility with the general public, thanks to implementations by some of the most respected companies in the financial services industry. One case in point is the deployment of Barclaycard’s Negative Voice Biometrics service offering, which won the The Card and Payment Award (TCPA) for “Best Security or Anti-fraud Development.”

Usually, companies are highly protective of the technologies that they put into service to counter efforts by fraudsters to highjack accounts or commit other fraud. However, in providing detail to the TCPA, Barclaycard explained that it has developed “a comprehensive library of known fraudsters’ voices and, using FraudMiner technology, implemented a ‘near real time’ pilot matching all incoming Customer Services and Fraud Detection caller voices against this blacklist.” FraudMiner is part of Nuance Communications portfolio of voice biometrics products. The judges were reportedly impressed by the innovation of the submission, along with the metrics. But it is also interesting to note that they liked the idea that “this could lead to industry-wide co-operation,” presumably meaning that several card issuers would share their negative file.

Meanwhile, the biometric identity management specialist Daon issued a detailed case study describing the implementation of its IdentityX Mobile Biometrics Solution for USAA. The IdentityX platform combines face and voice recognition with traditional PINs and liveness detection. As described in the company’s literature, this “triumvirate of Face, Voice and PIN options allows members to select their desired means of identity verification based on the circumstance at the moment.” That was USAA’s intent, and now Daon is offering similar capabilities to other firms offering simple security for mobile customers.

Daon’s account confirmed that USAA has achieved “mass adoption” across all of its member segments. “Within three weeks of launch, over 100,000 USAA members were using the biometric options, with an average of 2,000 adopting per day.” A triumverate of execs from USAA will keynote the second day of VBC-New York and will provide more up to date information on the deployment, along with details regarding their overall customer care objectives, ID & Auth experience and IVR strategy.

With the growth of mobile, digital commerce and maturity of solutions that integrate voice and other biometrics to leverage existing risk management and fraud reduction strategies, Opus Research expects to see many more implementations in the coming year.

Categories: Intelligent Authentication, Articles

Tags: Voice biometrics, customer experience, Mobile CX, USAA, fraud reduction