Nationwide hails iris recognition trials a success

Nationwide today released the first feedback on its iris recognition technology trials. The building society has been testing the biometric approach for the past six months at cashpoints at its Swindon headquarters.

The research, conducted by the Pegram Walters Group, found that the majority of customers would rather be identified by their eyes than by a PIN (personal identification number). Over 98 per cent of the 438 customers surveyed said they found iris recognition reliable, secure and acceptable.

The technology works by photographing a customer's iris each time they make a transaction. The photograph is matched against images held in a secure databank, using technology from Sensar and National Cash Registers (NCR). The process takes just two seconds - far quicker than the PIN method.

At E-commerce 98 in October Mike Rehberger, head of business futures at Nationwide, said: "The chances of two people having the same iris pattern are the same as winning the lottery jackpot four times in a row."

But Nationwide has no plans to expand the service from its Swindon headquarters, despite the survey's vote of confidence. Chief executive, Brian Davis, said that prices would have to drop before iris recognition became commercially viable. Rehberger added: "It's up to NCR to make us an offer."

He added that NCR was in negotiations with foreign customers, which might bring prices down.

Rehberger said future developments might include giving away free desktop cameras to customers of Nationwide's Internet service provider arm. "But we'd need to develop a single camera chip that both records and encrypts images, if we were going to install iris technology on third party machines," he said.

"We will be concentrating on cashpoint transactions for the next few years," he added, "because that's where we can bring down costs."