Fiserv awarded for biometric authentication solution implemented at U.S. financial institution

Fintech firm Fiserv, Inc. has received the 2016 IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings Real Results Award for ‘customer engagement’ for the use of its Verifast: Palm Authentication at Gesa Credit Union in Richland, Washington.

The Real Results Awards coincide with the annual IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings, based on the previous calendar year revenues attributed to financial institutions. Fiserv ranked fourth out of 125 vendors in this year’s rankings.

“We are thrilled to present Fiserv with the IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings Real Results Award for the implementation of biometric palm authentication at Gesa Credit Union,” said Karen Massey, senior analyst for banking at IDC. “This implementation demonstrated not only innovation in customer engagement, but also measurable benefits to the credit union and its members.”

Fiserv’s award-winning initiative focused on a beta program in which Fiserv and Gesa Credit Union collaborated to integrate secure palm-vein biometric authentication into Fiserv’s DNA account processing platform, which marked the first palm vein authentication solution implemented in a U.S. financial institution.

Verifast: Palm Authentication is built on Fujitsu’s PalmSecure technology, which uses near-infrared light to capture an individual’s palm vein pattern and match it against a database of pre-registered customers for authentication. As such, the biometric authentication method eliminates the need for the customer to show a photo ID or enter an account number.

During the beta program, Fiserv and Gesa found that the Verifast solution decreased the time it takes to authenticate a member in the branch by 93 percent, providing a more seamless customer experience, more time for personalized interaction, and greater security.

Additionally, about 99.9 percent of Gesa members using the solution rated the Palm Vein technology a perfect score on both the registration process and use.

“Biometric authentication via palm vein scanning can enhance customer engagement by providing a convenient, fast and highly secure method of identification,” said Chris VanDerStad, senior vice president and chief technology officer of open solutions at Fiserv. “As biometrics increasingly becomes part of our daily lives, Fiserv is leveraging these technologies to drive best-in-class results for our financial institution clients and outstanding experiences for their customers.”

Now in its second year, the IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings Real Results Awards honors IT firms that have enabled a genuine, measurable, and future-enabling change at a client financial institution in the worldwide financial services industry.

Article Topics

awards  |  banking  |  biometrics  |  fintech  |  Fiserv  |  palm vein authentication