Precision Biometric, Crunchfish to pilot mobile, offline retail payments in regulatory sandbox

Swedish gesture recognition and digital payments solution provider Crunchfish and one of India’s largest private banks, HDFC Bank, have been given the green light from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to use its regulatory sandbox to pilot an application for offline digital payments.

If the pilot, which is already underway is successful, it will serve as the foundation for RBI regulatory assistance and advice in introducing offline retail payments based on the Crunchfish Digital Cash platform to India’s payment ecosystem.

The technology works by sensing a user’s hand gesture with the camera of a mobile device and matching it with computer vision, which provides secure access to the funds stored on the offline device.

The RBI created the Regulatory Sandbox in 2020 to encourage responsible innovation in financial services sector and advance efficiency so as to ensure end-users enjoy more benefits.

With a banking network of 6,342 branches in 3,188 cities, HDFC Bank offers a diverse range of financial products and banking services to customers through a growing branch network and digital channels such as online and mobile banking.

“This innovative solution will enable HDFC Bank to reach a wider audience and allow its customers and merchants to make and receive payments in complete offline mode,” says Anjani Rathor, chief digital officer at HDFC Bank.

“This will boost financial inclusion by increased adoption of digital payments as it enables transactions without the need of network connections.”

Joachim Samuelsson, Crunchfish CEO, says it is a milestone to partner with HDFC Bank: “India is the leading real-time payments market in the world and in focus for our sales and marketing efforts. Crunchfish Digital Cash is highly relevant for the Indian market as it drives financial inclusion and increased payment availability. It is a great milestone for Crunchfish to team up with HDFC Bank to showcase Digital Cash for RBI.”

Financial Express quotes a statement from the RBI as saying “the solution aims to boost adoption of digital payments in areas of no or low network by enabling transactions without the need to have a network connection.”

The pilot will enable the collection of evidence on the benefits of new financial innovations, while carefully monitoring and containing their risks.

Last month, Crunchfish signed a three-year commercial licensing agreement with computer vision tech firm Guangdong Virtual Reality Technology Co Ltd to integrate its latest hand tracking technology into the latter’s next generation AR-glasses.

Precision Biometric key solution accepted

The InnalT Key Solution for Banking product from Precision Biometric India Pvt. has also been accepted to the regulatory sandbox by the RBI.

The solution provides biometric keys that can be used for passwordless or multi-factor authentication, replacing a one-time password for logins to online bank accounts. InnalT makes use of public key infrastructure and biometrics to enhance security and user experience, according to the RBI’s announcement.

This post was updated at 5:11pm Eastern on September 14, 2022 to clarify that Precision Biometric has been accepted to the sandbox separately from Crunchfish.

Article Topics

banking  |  biometric authentication  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  computer vision  |  gesture recognition  |  India  |  pilot project  |  Precision Biometric India