Banking used to be so simple. Financial crises aside, verifying the identity of a bank’s customers was a straightforward matter of human intelligence and simple paperwork.

 Your bank knew you because you would visit them almost every day to withdraw or transfer money, obtain statements or even just talk about the weather.

The bank held your signature on a small card in an index, reminiscent of a public library and provided both your physical appearance and your signature matched, you had access to all the financial services the branch had to offer. Banking was simple, human and yet surprisingly hard to defraud.
Calling out for common sense

Then along came payment cards, then the call centre and Internet Banking and everything changed. Customers had to deal with remote voices, sometimes challenging IVR systems, and be able to talk about or manage their own accounts.

We were issued with a seemingly endless series of passcodes, PINs, special words, numbers and other assorted hieroglyphics that outside of the rarefied world of the banks own security environment meant nothing and were notoriously difficult to remember. Suddenly, the name of your pet or mother was considered the most reliable form of identity token.

Challenges of current technology

From a security perspective, the humble debit or credit card has also been through many phases of metamorphosis. In an attempt to replicate the elegance and efficiency of the in-branch signature card, credit card issuing companies combined magnetic strip data with an exemplar signature.

But these had two major challenges: it wasn’t long before people worked out how to fake someone else’s signature and retailers were notoriously bad at checking the card with the transaction slip and, fraudsters quickly realised that with a modicum of brake fluid, a person’s signature and with it the only means of identity verification could be wiped clean away and replaced by the malefactor’s own moniker.

Of course, we now live in an era where chip and pin is pretty much ubiquitous but just as previous systems have been compromised or broken, so there are also weaknesses in the chip-based system. In very recent times, we learned that the much touted Oyster card has a weakness in that data can be read or copied or changed either without or in some cases with the holder of the card.

After all if you can add easily add credit might you be tempted?  Even major retailers in the UK are now finding themselves in fraud rings whereby chip and PIN data, is easily cloned. A game of cat and mouse between the bank and the fraudsters has evolved as to who can crack the next iteration of the latest encryption keys or hardware device.

As banking has become even more remote thanks to the Internet and mobile payments, so it’s become even more challenging to verify the identity of the person carrying out a transaction.

Banks have started to issue their customers with a variety of devices and security tokens that are designed to add additional layers of security – but having to carry yet another physical electronic device around wherever you go is hardly convenient for the user and the costs of deployment are quite substantial; costs which either have to be passed onto the bank’s customers or borne by the bank and let’s face it, in today’s challenging times for global financial services, the emphasis should be on reducing customer management overheads; not increasing them.

Voice signatures: a natural way to validate all financial transactions

So can we get back to the halcyon days of simple signature cards, and the human touch? While, it’s unrealistic to expect a complete return to the days of totally personalised service, the introduction of premium banking services for high net wealth customers is once again making the branch more relevant as a location for value-added service delivery.

But we can’t throw out the baby of convenience with the bath water of increased security. Thankfully, neither banks nor their customers have to take such extreme measures any more. For the institutions that have tried it, voice has the potential to transform payment authorisation and transactional identity in all retail financial services.

The beauty of voice signatures is many-fold: by default it is a primary form of human communication and it’s intuitive. We use our voices everyday as a means of instigating action, confirming intent and every person’s voice is unique.

Typically, after a person has spoken just a few words, the people that know them can identify them and a bond of communications trust is re-established. This also happens billions of times a day already, the same is now true for transactions carried out using a voice signature:  as well as making transactions over the phone or other remote channels, consumers can now pay for goods or authorise actions by signing with the voice.

And, it’s perfectly legal and as hard to repudiate as a physical signature. Voice signatures are not just voice biometrics. They are complex patented devices that combine the use of voice biometrics with transactional history, trends and patterns to create a highly secure, unique, authorisation environment.

Authorisation failures, suspected imposters or potential fraudsters can be instantly controlled and managed and transactions re-qualified using automated outbound IVR that improves customer service whilst reducing fraud – indeed far more secure in many cases – than many other forms of identity verification, such as written signature or chip.

Retail financial services have changed beyond all recognition and as such, we can never go back. When I launched WorldPay, I introduced the Internet Payments Guarantee, which helped build confidence in internet commerce and I think voice signatures have the potential to bring the same level of reassurance to other types of remote transaction – from contract signing to buying goods and services from your mobile phone.

For many people, the benefits of banking remotely far outweigh the risks, but it can sometimes appear that retail banks have somehow resigned themselves to a certain level of persistent background fraud as just part of remote banking.

I would suggest that voice signatures offer a superior level of confidence for almost all financial transactions; not just payments for unique reason. Voice signatures enable banks to have confidence in a transactional authenticity whilst giving control and responsibility back to the account holder.

No other approach delivers that transactional integrity from virtually anywhere using just a standard telephone. No special hardware or software are required just our natural ability to speak.