BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
The chief executive officer of Environ Tech Systems, Ive Chike Meme, has urged Nigerian banks to embrace advanced vein biometrics to fight against increasing electronic fraud in the country.
Meme said finger vein biometrics becomes the most suitable selection to prevent higher-value fraud and protect billions to trillions in real-time authentication.
He said this in a closed-door industry event in Lagos recently. The event was attended by representatives from all major banks, law enforcement agencies, and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“Job zero for all IT professionals is security. The advent of AI renders many passwords, pins, and tokens obsolete, and there’s an alarming rise of insider fraud,” he said.
“We constantly seek what we call ‘proof of life’ – a real human being, alive in real-time, that can present a digital audit footprint,” he stated.
“Fingerprint technology is good for basic, low-risk approvals,” he added.
He further noted that finger vein biometrics is the most suitable selection safest biometric performance to combat higher-value fraud and protect billions to trillions in real-time authentication.
He added that the advanced biometric authentication technology was developed by Japanese technology giant Hitachi.
“The technology has already been successfully implemented by major international financial institutions, including HSBC, Citibank Japan, Barclays Bank in the UK, and Natixis in France.”
“Barclays Bank, for example, has used finger vein technology to protect all business corporate account holders for over a decade and is now implementing its second-generation version of the platform.”
“The finger vein biometric system offers what experts call proof of life authentication – a non-spoofable method that instantly matches unique vein patterns in users’ fingers. Unlike traditional biometrics, this technology cannot be copied, lifted, or falsified, providing unprecedented security for high-value financial transactions.”
This was among the proposals presented to the Association of Chief Compliance Officers of Banks in Nigeria (ACCOBIN) following the surge in banking fraud across Nigeria.
Environ Tech Systems is currently the only vendor in Nigeria to receive approval from the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to deploy finger vein technology. The approval process, which began with prototype testing in 2016, culminated in final approvals in 2022 and 2023.
The CBN publicly endorsed finger vein technology at the Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) in 2019 and has now confirmed that banks can adopt the platform to combat fraud and identity theft.
