Barclays Employs Voice Biometrics to Authenticate Phone Banking Customers
CIOReview Team | Thursday, 29 September 2016, 09:10 IST

Barclays has been testing voice biometrics technology since 2013 and this past weekend the bank announced that it is ready to introduce the service to all of its personal banking clients to quickly authenticate phone-banking customers.

According to a report in ZDNet, when customers use telephone banking, the technology will be able to identify them simply from the first few words they speak by comparing the customer’s unique voice print against a voice print the bank has already gathered. Voice prints will be stored securely, and customers can opt out and have their voice print permanently deleted.

Apparently Barclays will need to have at least two copies of a clients’ voice print before customers can opt to use the voice recognition system rather than a password to authenticate themselves.

 “There’s no need for customers to change how they bank with us, or in fact do anything differently at all,” said Steven Cooper, CEO of Personal Banking at Barclays. “Just continue to use telephone banking in the same way.”