Half of the residents of million-plus cities constantly make everyday purchases at non-cash payments, according to the analytical center NAFI. In cities from 500 thousand to 1 million inhabitants - 41%.
At the beginning of 2017, 80% of the Russian population had bank cards. Today, large businesses are introducing advanced payment methods: using mobile services or using fingerprints, facial scans, and voice. In the future, such methods should replace or at least fully duplicate plastic cards. At this time, situations such as technical difficulites at the bank or lost passwords baffle users, although most of them can be easily resolved with the help of modern technology.
Three simple stories in which, at first glance, you cannot buy water in a store without cash.
Story No. 1. You forgot your map at home
In fact, you can buy goods without a bank card almost everywhere. In any supermarket or cafe where terminals accept contactless payments (when you don’t need to insert a card into the terminal, but just touch it to the screen), you can easily buy goods through a mobile application. Many technology fans can tell you that they haven’t used plastic for several months and don’t even remember the password for their card.
The most popular applications are Apple pay or Android pay, to which you can link cards of any banks. The main difference is that Apple pay only works on Apple gadgets, while the Android pay service supports all kinds of devices.
Other companies are also developing their services. For example, the Samsung Pay payment system appeared relatively recently, which calls its advantage that it allows you to pay for purchases at any terminals - not only those that support contactless payment.
Some products and services can be purchased by scanning a QR code through apps. Soon this system will be popularized in the mass market. At the end of November 2017, Sberbank announced plans to implement it in a mobile application so that a QR code could be used to buy goods in any store. The application model is similar: launch the application, scan the code, confirm the operation.
Story No. 2. You forgot your smartphone at home, and there is a mobile banking application in it
In this case, you can pay in some stores using biometric data.
“After the success of introducing contactless payments, banks and supermarkets became interested in biometric payment methods: by fingerprints, face, retina, voice,” lists Dmitry Morozov, business analyst at CUSTIS Group. “Sberbank is developing technologies for paying for school meals using the palm of your hand. And in September "Azbuka Vkusa" launched payment by fingerprint."
A buyer who wants to pay at the ABC of Taste in an advanced way - by placing his finger on a special terminal - must register at the checkout for this - by linking a card of any bank to his data. In fact, his fingerprints are not some kind of wallet, but a duplicate of a plastic card, just like the data in a mobile application.
Payment using biometric data is the future of trade and services. There is a growing number of startups around the world that are inventing and improving identification systems. The simplest and most popular model - using fingerprints - is considered less reliable and faster than identification using a face scan, iris and voice. Unusual cases are also being created in this area - for example, Chinese developers have come up with a gait recognition system.
If we roughly describe our future, as the developers of such technologies see it, it looks like this: “Residents of the Chinese city of Yinchuan never buy tickets for public transport. As soon as you enter the bus, your face is scanned and the fee is debited from the passenger’s account automatically,” Tigran Poghosyan, senior vice president for Russia of the Chinese company ZTE-Svyaztechnologies, tells TASS about the “smart city” in China. Such a scheme, of course, can be extended. for any purchases.
Story No. 3. The bank has technical problems and all plastic cards do not work
But this is a really unpleasant situation.
In my opinion, in the future a certain “super card” will be linked to the fingerprint, combining the functions of a bank card, loyalty cards, installment plans and allowing you to store information about the balance or the loan provided. Then the supermarket will be able to carry out small purchases for loyal customers even in the absence of communication with the bank.
Dmitry Morozov
business analyst, CUSTIS group of companies
“Payment by fingerprint is an analogue of contactless payment technologies: PayPass, payWave. Thus, now the lack of communication with the acquiring bank blocks the possibility of purchasing,” says Dmitry Morozov.
His words are confirmed by Andrey Golubtsov, a representative of the press service of the Azbuka Vkusa retail chain: “In the event of such a failure at a certain bank, given that your biometric data is linked to its card, you will have to wait until the problems are fixed. Other options are to use a bank card, who at that moment does not have a failure in the system, or buy with a bonus savings card. Bonus cards Every major chain has it."
Banks that issue cards, according to Morozov, can refine their products and allow the client to make purchases even during a technical blackout. "Contactless transport cards, for example, to pay for travel on the metro, they work on a similar principle, but they contain information about the balance of funds, which allows you to pay for travel even when there is no connection."
And some banks offer customers a cash limit that is guaranteed to be available in the event of a failure. “If the operation is carried out using a card from one of the international payment systems - Mir, Visa, MasterCard and the processing of the card issuing bank is not available, then for uninterrupted service there is a special STIP function - Stand in processing. This function allows you to buy using the card within the limit , which each bank sets at its own discretion,” says Sergey Varganov, director of the payment cards department of RosEvroBank.
Anastasia Stepanova
The Russian banking sector has begun to introduce biometric customer identification systems using voice, fingerprints and facial images. The Central Bank, Rosfinmonitoring and the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications have begun work on creating a unified biometric database.
VTB24 Bank will begin testing biometric identification when using Internet banking in January. According to the head of the bank's department, Elena Degteva, users of the application on the iOS platform will be invited to participate in a pilot project lasting 3 months. Identification will be based on the client's photograph and voice sample.
Another project of VTB24 Bank that is preparing to launch is voice identification of clients when calling the call center. Testing of this technology should be completed by September.
A similar technology is already used at Tinkoff Bank. They also plan to introduce facial recognition identification.
Alexander Solonin from VTB Bank announced the planned implementation of Touch ID technology to identify clients using fingerprints. The fingerprint scanner is planned to be used in mobile banking incl. to confirm transactions.
This identification is used today by Home Credit and Promsvyazbank. At Sberbank, Touch ID technology was introduced back in 2014.
According to analyst Eldar Murtazin, there are approximately 14 million iPhones in the Russian Federation, of which 5.8 million support Touch ID.
Identification by facial recognition was introduced in Leto Bank in 2015 (today Almost Bank). The biometrics of new clients are compared with the existing client base and the fraudster base. The system is used when issuing loans and authorizing bank employees.
Similar pilot project launched in three metropolitan branches of Otkritie Bank. Faces are recognized using a camera built into the electronic queue terminal.
Sberbank implemented a series of pilot projects using biometrics in 2016. The Bank has already accredited a number of companies as suppliers of recognition systems.
B&N Bank is also negotiating with suppliers, and Raiffeisenbank is currently testing a number of biometric technologies.
Rosbank said that they have already carried out several pilot projects and have now launched a project to introduce biometrics into service systems. The use of biometrics has already led to a reduction in fraud in the issuance of loans.
The Central Bank is preparing for biometrics
The Central Bank has begun to study security issues and the legal side of remote identification. Full testing of the system is planned for 2017.
The implementation of the project will allow the client to refuse to visit the bank when opening an account. After confirming your registration on State Services, you will be able to remotely open accounts in any bank in the country. First, you will need to identify yourself with your bank, after which this will be noted accordingly in your profile on State Services. Such identification will be equivalent to presenting a passport.
According to VisionLabs CEO Alexander Khanin (identification software development), the duration of the Central Bank pilot project will be 12 months.
Future prospects
According to Alexander Ermakovich from Kaspersky Lab, biometric identification may become widespread in the Russian Federation only in 3-5 years.
Biometric methods are not 100% secure. Attackers begin to look for vulnerabilities in the system even before its implementation, warns Ermakovich.
Pavel Gurin from Pochta Bank agrees that biometric methods will not yet replace traditional ones, but will only complement them. For example, biometrics will reduce risk in transactions with increased limits.
This technology is already used in Promsvyazbank and Home Credit, said representatives of these credit institutions. Authorization in mobile banking is tied to the fingerprint scanner in Apple phones. Sberbank introduced customer identification using Touch ID technology back in 2014.
According to the leading analyst of Mobile Research Group, Eldar Murtazin, there are about 14 million iPhones in Russia. Of these, 5.8 million devices support Touch ID.
Biometric identification of clients based on facial recognition systems is also used in some Russian banks. In 2015, it was introduced by Leto Bank (now Post Bank), said a representative of this credit institution. The biometric parameters of new Pochta Bank clients are compared with the existing client base, and also compared with the base of fraudsters, he says. The system is used to counter external and internal fraud - when issuing loans and when authorizing bank employees. “It quickly paid for itself, and its use allowed the bank to save about 100 million rubles,” noted a bank representative.
A similar pilot project was launched in three Moscow branches of Otkritie Bank, where a facial recognition camera was built into the electronic queue terminal, Alexey Blagirev, the bank’s innovation director, told RBC.
In 2016, Sberbank implemented a series of pilot projects involving the use of biometric technologies in different service channels and use scenarios, a bank representative told RBC. The bank also accredited VisionLabs, Comlogic, Prosoft Biometrix and Fujitsu Technology Solutions as suppliers of facial recognition systems.
Negotiations with potential suppliers of biometric customer identification systems are being conducted by B&N Bank, said Pavel Chebotarev, head of the bank’s innovative development center.
Raiffeisenbank is currently testing several biometric technologies, Sergei Grib, head of the bank’s integrated risk management department, told RBC.
Rosbank is actively exploring the inclusion of biometrics in internal processes and in customer service. “We have launched an important project to integrate biometric data into our service systems. This was preceded by a number of pilot projects, which gave a decent result in reducing the number of frauds at the stage of analyzing loan applications,” said Elena Bronnikova, director of change management at Rosbank.
The Central Bank is preparing for biometrics
Meanwhile, the Bank of Russia has begun the next stage of work on a unified biometric data base - working on security issues and the legal foundation for remote identification of clients, the regulator’s press service told RBC. A pilot test of the biometric identification system, in which several retail banks will participate, is planned by the Bank of Russia for 2017.
The project was developed by the Central Bank together with the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications and Rosfinmonitoring. As RBC previously wrote, it will allow the client to abandon the physical presence of the client when opening an account in a new bank. “You can come to one bank in any part of the country, confirm your account[on “State Services”], and then move to Moscow and, if the need arises, remotely open a bank account or submit a loan application in the future,” said Olga Skorobogatova, deputy chairman of the Central Bank, at the Finopolis 2016 forum in October.
The system will work like this. After the client has been personally identified at the bank, a corresponding mark will appear in his profile on State Services. If the client decides to use the remote services of another bank, then this bank, having received permission from the user to access his personal data on State Services, will be able to identify his identity; such identification will be equivalent to presenting a passport.
The specific timing and participants of the pilot project have not yet been determined , follows from the commentary of the Central Bank provided by RBC.
The pilot project of the Central Bank will take 12 months, says Alexander Khanin, CEO of VisionLabs, a development company software for face recognition. Customers of participating banks will be able to “register” their faces (take a photo to enter the photo into the reference database) so that these images can be used for remote identification. Thanks to it, clients will have access to current accounts, opening deposits, receiving loans, transfers and payments, Khanin lists.
The future is in the faces
Despite the interest of banks and financial authorities in biometrics, its widespread implementation will not become widespread in 2017, RBC’s interlocutors say. In Russia, this method of identifying clients may become widespread in 3-5 years, believes Alexander Ermakovich, head of the online and mobile banking protection department at Kaspersky Lab. “We should not forget about the privacy problem - not all users are ready to share data such as a fingerprint or an eye scan with the bank,” he adds.
According to Ermakovich, today biometric identification methods cannot be called 100% safe. “The technology is new, not all developers know how to use it correctly. Attackers, in turn, begin to look for vulnerabilities in it even before introducing it into mass products,” the expert warns.
There is no talk yet of completely replacing other identification methods with biometrics, agrees Pavel Gurin, member of the board of Post Bank. At the same time, he believes that current identification methods can be strengthened by biometrics. “For example, the “username-password” pair that has become common when identifying a client will not soon become a thing of the past. But for transactions with higher limits or riskier ones, additional biometric identification can be used as a “confidence enhancer,” says Gurin.
With the participation of Anna Balashova
Identification of clients of large Russian banks will be transferred to biometric methods in the next two years. Among those who are going to check clients’ fingerprints and scan their retinas are Sberbank and B&N Bank.
Biometric methods of identifying clients will be introduced in the largest Russian banks within two years. Reports about this appeared in the press. Thus, Sberbank of Russia and Binbank announced that they are going to identify their clients by retina, fingerprints and photographs. Bankers plan to use different identification methods in different service channels.Sberbank began introducing new technologies from schoolchildren. Already now, Moscow children who are holders of cards for paying for lunch in school canteens can pay for their purchases using a palm print. The same identification method is used to admit students to school. The child’s palm is “linked” to his parent’s payment card and funds are debited from the card only after its pattern is read using a special sensor. The cardholder receives an SMS at the time the money is debited. At the same time, the information reflects not only the cost of the purchase, but also the menu chosen by the child. Bankers consider such a service convenient, and situations with parents’ complaints about frequent failures in the system are attributed to minor errors in its operation. In general, the method works. Therefore, it can be implemented in a wider range of banking services.
Bank management tells journalists about this, noting that well-proven identification methods will gradually be combined with new methods.
In the future, bankers are going to link clients' biometric data to their bank accounts (debit/credit). This will allow us to issue contactless cards (Visa PayWave and Mastercard PayPass), as well as provide banking services using smartphones with NFC chips. Customers wishing to cash out money or make a transfer will simply place their finger on POS terminals or look carefully into the retinal pattern reader.
Such methods of identifying citizens using biometric technologies have long been widely used in foreign banks. Thus, approximately 50% of US citizens carry out financial operations using contactless cards or smartphones using biometrics. European countries show approximately 41% of such mobile banking.
Experts are confident that the spread of biometric identification methods in banking services Russian citizens is a positive phenomenon. However, while it practical application is hampered by a number of negative factors:
People are still very skeptical about such methods of identifying them. Considering that fingerprinting is traditionally perceived in our country as a way to identify criminals, citizens do not want to leave their fingerprints. This is perceived as excessive control on the part of the authorities. At the same time, it is convenient for bankers themselves to use biometrics also because this data is convenient to store in electronic form and to ensure its security there is no need to modify existing storage facilities or equip new ones. Data security is ensured by modern encryption methods and bankers are confident in the reliable protection of data from intruders. Moreover, they are going to use complex identification methods. For example, combine biometrics with entering old time-tested PIN codes when making large purchases.
Large banks have the technologies and financial capabilities to implement such technologies. In addition, this allows them to more fully implement modern mobile banking tools and integrate into the global financial services system. Therefore, very soon Russians will have to get used to the fact that they will be fingerprinted when visiting banks.
Leto-Bank celebrated its year of operation at credit market Russia. An event held on June 13, 2013 was dedicated to this event. The first employee of Leto Bank was hired on June 1, 2012, he became the president and chairman of the board of the bank Dmitry Rudenko, which he announced to those invited to the “Summer” party New Year» to journalists.
A subsidiary bank of the VTB Group, Leto-Bank, focused on mass lending to the population, entered the wide market in the fall of 2012, and the volume of loans in the first 1.5 months of operation exceeded 100 million rubles. During the first year of operation, the bank's loan portfolio grew to 7.3 billion rubles, and by the end of this year the bank intends to increase its portfolio to 18 billion rubles. During the year of operation, the bank opened 181 client centers in 6 federal districts of Russia. The bank also concluded more than 10 thousand agreements with stores where it is now possible to obtain a bank loan for goods. In 2013, the bank intends to continue to actively develop its network, and by the end of the year it will have 250 client centers, Dmitry Rudenko is sure.
The bank’s team is tasked with creating a customer base of several million people over several years, creating a sales network of at least 1 thousand branches and several thousand points of presence in stores. “The bank’s shareholder, VTB Group, looks positively at our plans and is not even surprised when we exceed them. Thus, over the year we exceeded our own growth plan by at least 2 times,” said Dmitry Rudenko.
The bank's managers also spoke about the development plans of the credit institution. At 10 Leto-Bank service centers in Central federal district There is already a pilot project for identifying clients using biometric data, Leto-Bank’s risk director told the website Olga Stepanova. At the stage of filling out the application, the client leaves his fingerprint at the bank. Bank employees explain to clients who apply to the bank for loans that this is being done to prevent attackers from using the client’s data, and not for the purpose of tracking bank clients. According to Olga Stepanova, client identification by fingerprint is necessary to reduce fraud in the credit sector, since you often have to deal with the fact that in some companies, when applying for a job, a person’s passport is photocopied even during an interview. Such cases are especially frequent in the regions.
“Then they don’t hire the person, but this copier “walks” around the banks, and according to the person’s data, loans are issued without his knowledge,” noted Olga Stepanova. As part of the project, about 600 people have already given their consent to submit biometric data to the bank, and the bank’s clients do not have to be persuaded to leave a fingerprint, since they understand the importance of this information. The project started in April of this year, its data will be compiled at the end of summer 2013. Subsequently, the client who left his fingerprint at Leto-Bank will have the opportunity to take out a new loan without even presenting his passport, since the passport can also be lost, simply forgotten at home or forged. But nothing can change the unique pattern of capillaries on the finger, explained the first deputy board of the bank Georgy Gorshkov.
Also, based on the results of this experiment, Leto-Bank will evaluate the prospects for introducing ATMs into practice that will issue money to bank clients without entering a PIN code - also by scanning a fingerprint.
Georgy Gorshkov announced at the presentation of the first Moscow client center of Leto-Bank in November 2012 that the bank has begun testing ATMs in which, when applying for money, clients will be given the option of undergoing fingerprint identification. Then Gorshkov noted that the widespread use new technology The bank can be expected as early as July 1, 2013. Now the timing of the introduction of the innovation has shifted somewhat.
The banker noted that various options for accessing the account are being explored: using a fingerprint, by comparing the network of veins and scanning the retina. But preference was still given to fingerprint scanning, as the simplest and most tested technology. At the same time, he said that the identification procedure would be no more difficult than submitting a fingerprint for a visa to the USA or Britain. Georgy Gorshkov explained to the site that the bank is ready for the fact that some clients will not be “eager” to leave their fingerprints to the bank, since such a procedure is modern society associated with being included in the database of law enforcement agencies. But at the same time, the deputy chairman of the bank noted that now Russians leave a lot of information about themselves in in social networks, although no one is forcing them to do so. That’s why he believes that after communicating with bank employees, some clients, especially progressive young people, will still agree to the conditions of the credit institution, since they will see this as an additional guarantee of protecting their funds.
From the point of view of increasing security, this is certainly a useful innovation, especially in the context of increasing card fraud, since entering a PIN code and fingerprint is essentially a 99 percent guarantee that the client’s identification will be correct. Innovations are always good, as for issuing loans and identifying clients through this function, everything will depend on where the fingerprint data bank is stored and who can use it, says the head of the customer service department of Lanta Bank Olesya Lukhtay. She notes that all innovations that simplify identification have a future, and the more the population is informed about this, the faster we will get used to modern technologies, making our life easier.
The prospects for this technology are questionable, starting with how justified the costs of upgrading equipment are, and ending with the position of customer approval, believes the director of the department of economic and information protection of business at Rosgosstrakh Bank. Artem Gonta. He adds that similar technologies are already used in some countries - Switzerland, Germany, France, Japan, India, Brazil and some others - but most experts assess their effectiveness as low, given the high percentage of identification failures, as well as the risks associated with an attack on citizen users of card accounts, when the fingers of cardholders were simply cut off in order to attach them to the identifier. “The biometric customer identification system should work globally, and not in a single bank. The necessary infrastructure must be created, a unified database for storing fingerprints, legal issues must be resolved, since the law does not clearly regulate that banks can identify clients using a biometric method,” notes the banker.
Several years ago, one of the banks tried to introduce customer identification by iris in one of the Asian countries. Not only that new system turned out to be very expensive, it was not widely used due to the fact that it was poorly received by customers. “A similar thing is possible in this case,” warns Gonta. Thus, he believes that this innovation will be very expensive, and for it banks need special equipment, knowledge, maintaining fingerprint files of clients, specialists in this field are needed, and they also need to train bank employees and the like.
But Georgy Gorshkov recalled that Leto-Bank is a credit institution that never follows the beaten classical path, since for it the classical path is too expensive. “We have more ideas than opportunities to implement them, but they are all different from classical banking,” he said. Some of the ideas concern the customer service procedure at the bank itself. For example, a bank is launching banknote recycling technology at its ATMs. Now those bills that are issued to the client at Russian ATMs and those that are accepted from the client using cash-in technology are collected in different cassettes. Therefore, even if there are bills in the cassette where money is collected, the ATM cannot dispense funds from the card if the cash dispensing cassette is empty. And Leto-Bank is going to use a technology in which both the bills issued by the ATM to the client and the banknotes received from people will be accumulated in one cassette. This technology should be supplemented by a special machine check of banknotes for authenticity, so that if a fraudster manages to “feed” a counterfeit bill to the ATM (and the ATM for some reason mistook it for a genuine one), it does not fall into the hands of a respectable bank client.
The bank will also help correct the credit history of its clients. To do this, he will recommend that every client coming to the bank request his credit history from the bureau, and if there are negative aspects in it, then bank employees will recommend various actions to form it. We are talking, rather, not about malicious defaulters, but about those clients of other banks who were issued credit cards, and they are in debt for those cards that they never often used - for example, up to 1 thousand rubles per issue and card service, noted Olga Stepanova. “The debt is small, but there is a big minus in the credit history due to “overdue debt.” We will recommend that such people pay off their debts,” the specialist said.
Leto-Bank also introduced a program to reward its clients - for those who took out a loan for a period of at least six months and did not make any delays within 6 payments, the bank returns part of the interest rate for using the loan.