Facial recognition, which works by scanning someone’s face and matching it with a database image, is already widely used for purposes such as unlocking smartphones.

Being a part of verification at the ubiquitous cash dispensers is also not new, with such services being introduced by several Chinese banks from as early as 2015, according to local media reports.

Spain’s CaixaBank has also been allowing customers to withdraw money from ATMs just by scanning their faces. It started off with 20 ATMs in early-2019 before embarking on a nationwide roll-out last June.

The biometric tool will be first used for account balance enquiries – piloted by eight ATMs. It will be gradually rolled out across the bank’s domestic network of 550 ATMs and expanded to cash withdrawals.

OCBC is the first bank in Southeast Asia to introduce facial recognition at ATMs

Account balance enquiries and cash withdrawals are the most used ATM services, comprising nearly eight in ten of all ATM transactions performed by OCBC customers.

Next year, other services will be added, such as cash deposits, funds transfers to other banks, cashcard top-ups and credit card bill payments.

The bank says it is the first to tap Singapore’s National Digital Identity infrastructure, SingPass Face Verification, to securely verify customers for banking transactions at ATMs without the need for plastic cards. A customer’s scanned face is matched and verified against Singapore’s national biometric database containing the images and identities of four million Singapore residents.

Face verification is embedded with security features to prevent fraud, including liveness-detection technology that detects and blocks the use of photographs, videos, or masks during the verification process, according to the bank.