Standard Bank is constantly aiming to significantly boost its customer convenience and mobile banking security offerings. As such Standard Bank has just launched South Africa’s first biometric mobile banking solution for iPhone and iPad users, using Apple’s TouchID technology.

This message was emphasised by Magnus Taljaard, Head of Mobile Banking at Standard Bank. “We are always on the lookout for ways to make banking easier and safer for our customers. With the latest upgrade to our banking apps, customers with Touch ID enabled smartphones and tablets have the option to use Apple’s fingerprint identity sensor to sign into our mobile banking apps." He added that "this gives the promise of ‘banking at your fingertips’ an added dimension.”

A number of international banks have introduced similar features to their apps and, according to predictions by Juniper Research, global downloads of biometric-enabled apps will hit the 6 million mark this year. This figure is set to increase to more than 770 million downloads per year by 2019, which serves as an indication that biometric solutions are rapidly being adopted by the mobile community.

Standard Bank says its mobile banking app has become an integral part of the banks customers’ lives.  On average, customers use Standard Bank’s banking app more than twice a week. Furthermore, since the launch of Standard Bank’s third generation smartphone app, an average of 65 000 customers have registered every month. Over the past ten months, value transactions processed through the app doubled to more than R10 billion per month.

According to Taljaard, “Our customers’ security is of the utmost importance to us. The new biometric identification feature therefore underwent rigorous testing so that we could ensure a safe and robust solution for our customers. The ability to sign in using the fingerprint sensor is also combined with an additional security layer for certain transactions, for example when paying a new beneficiary.”  

Standard Bank has also stated plans to roll out this feature to biometrically-enabled Android phones in the near future.