Touchless technology has created a buzz in all possible industries, becoming the most popular word of the last decade. Every one of us have witnessed the growing use of touchless technology at various instances such as automatic taps at malls, automatic doors at the supermarkets, biometrics at the airport, or even using no-touch technology on the phone by using virtual voice assistants integrated with smartphones. Touchless technology can operate on touchless sensing, voice recognition, facial recognition, etc.
Touchless technology was developed as a part of the innovation process to create a new interaction experience beyond the tedious traditional customer interaction methods. It creates a new interface allowing one to use their voice or gesture to hold a communication with the device. The popularity of the contactless technology emerged for greater convenience and security it offers.
Even before COVID-19 swept the global countries in 2020 letting people emphasize touchless technology to curb the infection rate, it had long before gained popularity among the retail and corporate customers for the greater convenience they offer. The banking/ financial sector has utilized touchless technology like no other industries, to offer seamless customer service. With the rising threat of COVID-19 and global travel restrictions, there was a decreased footfall in the banks. This led banks and financial companies to continue making hefty investments in touchless technology to improve their customer service like never before. The touchless technologies, which had been preparing beneath the surface made their appearance ever more strongly during this pandemic, giving rise to the massive transformation in digital touchless banking.
Touchless customer service in banking/ financial sector
With banks and financial companies embracing touchless technology, the advancement is growing much beyond touchless payments and transactions. Furthermore, the rapidly increasing pandemic has witnessed a reduced footfall in banks as people are preferring virtual platforms over physical branches. With touchless payments being introduced, one can make a payment by just waving, tapping, or scanning cards or smartphones at the merchant machine/ QR codes.
The scope of touchless technology in the banking and financial sector is immense. Know your customers (KYC) validation, which was earlier required by the customers to visit the branch and submit the documents physically, has undergone a series of changes to ensure that the validation is completed within a few taps on the smartphone and authenticating using facial recognition solutions. Moreover, banks are offering greater flexibility to the customers by introducing online banking, mobile banking, chatbot support, and third-party apps for added ease and satisfaction.
The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has led people to switch to touchless payment to minimize the risk of infection. There has been a significant surge in the number of people using contactless transactions during this period. The banking process such as video KYC and virtual credit cards, which were still at a nascent stage, have geared up in the recent past.
With the growing use of apps, smartphones are slowly becoming the new mode of payment. UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments, such as Google Pay, have gained popularity in the last few years. UPI has become customers’ new favorite for the ease and seamlessness it offers. It has literally replaced the wallets while offering completely secured and smooth payment option.
Banks are, further, turning towards advanced technology such as AI and ML for decision-making and process automation solutions to streamline the bottlenecks in operational bank servicing processes. Similarly, infrastructure and development of a microservice banking architecture also allows flexibility, scalability, and continuous change.
To initiate anytime and anywhere service, banks have introduced advanced solutions such as interactive teller machines, kiosks, lockers to pick up negotiable instruments, and instant-issue debit cards. These new introductions by banks and financial companies are slowly changing the way we make payments in today’s technology-driven world.
Transaction authentication for retail clients
Customer expectations are ever-changing, creating immense pressure on the banks, financial institutions, and Fintechs to offer better than what they have now; this transformation has led to touchless payments. Unlike physical transactions where the customer has complete control of the merchant system, touchless transactions do not. Hence, it becomes mandatory to have an excellent authentication process to ensure a completely secure transaction.
Bank frauds were on the rise in the last few years, the case of identity theft, money heist, data breach, and other banking scams were commonly increasing. To ensure adequate security during touchless transactions, banks have invested a hefty amount in improving their authentication system. This forms an integral part of the transaction process which cannot be compromised. With the improved authentication process, bank frauds have been reduced tremendously.
Banks have enforced new login methods to authenticate the transaction; the popular verification process includes password login, OTP authentication, and text code verification, among others. Banks are coming up with two-factor authentication for tighter security; this offers much more security than just using a password. Here, the user provides two different factors to authenticate his transaction. The factors may include a password along with fingerprint verification, facial scan, and so on.
With the increasing contactless transactions, banks and Fintechs are moving towards an intelligent authentication process. Banks are developing intelligent authentication strategies where there are thousands of authentication points underlaid for an individual customer. The growth in the technology front is paving way for more advanced authentication systems in the near future.
Transaction authentication for corporate clients
Banks and financial institutions are tying up with multinational companies and other smaller and medium companies to offer financial services. To protect the customers’ accounts, they are boosting up their security systems to eliminate banking frauds, while offering convenient transactions without any risk.
To secure corporate transactions, banks and financial institutions have a strong authentication in place. When a corporate client initiates a transaction, it determines the number of approvers required for the transaction. Authentication messages are pushed to the approvers which display the details of the transaction, which can be accepted or rejected by the approver. The responses are further, required to be digitally signed using certificates namely emCert X.509.
Corporate authentications are fully encrypted communication channels with mutual authentication. It offers two-factor authentication and is protected by completely secured systems to provide safety from malware attacks. Furthermore, these authentications are ISO 21188:2006 compliance and work on fallback technologies like SMS or OTP generation.
How secure are touchless transactions?
Contactless payments are more secure than you think; it offers security and convenience without letting you compromise on either. To strengthen the security of cardless payments, the transactions are protected by a PIN number which is used by the customer to authenticate the payment. When a contactless transaction is carried out, there are multiple, complex algorithms running in the background to ensure the transaction happens instantly, accurately, and securely.
Similarly, UPI platforms like Google Pay, also offer completely secure transactions. Here, the payments are carried out in highly secured servers. The details of the card are always masked and never stored in the phone or shared with merchants. Payments are usually carried out by using mobile numbers. While using the UPI platform for transactions, a confirmation is sent to verify your payment. This verification mail includes the details of the payment such as amount, merchant’s name, and so on. This kind of contactless transaction also provides the option of locking the app using android device manager, in case of a lost/ misplaced phone.
In case of other contactless payments such as virtual credit card, cardless payments, interactive teller machine, cardless cash withdrawal, or drive through ATM, the payments are completely secured by authenticating the transaction with an OTP (one time password) sent to the registered mobile number.
The payments done by scanning QR Code or wirelessly connecting to the POS (Point of Sales) machine is done by using the near-field communication technology that transmits the digital data and allows the card to connect wirelessly to the machine.
Why Yethi for testing digital authentication process?
Yethi is your go-to partner for helping you with testing the authentication of contactless transactions and related advisory. At Yethi, we understand that touchless transactions are moving much beyond card payments. With the growing use of apps, smartphones are slowly becoming the new mode of payment. Hence, we offer banks and financial institutions an advanced system to test the authentication in contactless payments. Yethi’s Tenjin is a revolutionary test automation platform that is diminishing operational, financial, and reputational hazards with end-to-end business process authentication. It focuses on increasing the agility, consistency, and accuracy of the organization’s core software system.