Diebold, Tracom launch biometric ATMs in Kenya

Diebold, along with Kenya’s Tracom Services, have jointly launched a new line of fingerprint ATMs in Nairobi, in an attempt to curb bank fraud in the country.

Fingerprint scanners will be used alongside access cards as a second form of authentication.

Reported in Business Daily Africa, the banking industry is currently making a switch from magnetic strip cards to new cards with EMV (Europay MasterCard Visa) embedded microchips and the machines will be used with these new more secure cards.

“Card trapping is regaining popularity due to the EMV technology that has countered the problem of skimming. With the fingerprint required to complete a transaction, a fraudster who traps the card will still not be able to access the account afterwards,” Diebold Product marketing manager of ATMs Martin Koffijberg said.

Enrollment for the system will take place locally, at bank branches.

Reported previously, Diebold also played a role in a fingerprint ATM project in Brazil, along with Lumidigm.

Diebold also recently supplied equipment for a recent election in Brazil using fingerprint sensors. In that project, the company used DigitalPersona hardware for the fingerprint scans.

The concept of biometric ATMs is catching on – in particular, in Africa.  This week, Sanusi Lamido, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, announced that the bank is set to introduce biometric ATMs by 2015.   

Article Topics

ATM  |  authentication  |  commercial  |  Diebold  |  fingerprint  |  verification