StanChart launches fingerprint banking technology in Kenya

Standard Chartered Bank Kenya has introduced a biometric access system that allows customers to use their fingerprints to log into their accounts.

“Standard Chartered clients can now securely access their bank account balances, cards and investments using their fingerprints as identifiers,” the bank said in a statement.

Dubbed Touch Login, the technology will be available on smartphones, iPhones, tablets and iPads. The function was piloted in Singapore, the UAE and India mid this year prior to its roll out in Kenya.

“Fingerprint technology gives our clients more convenience and security. Touch login uses fingerprints to verify identity, making it more secure than username and password logins,” Stanchart’s CEO Lamin Manjang said in the statement.

Mr Manjang said through the Standard Chartered mobile app, clients using touch login will be able to access the lender’s full range of mobile banking services from moving money between accounts and checking transactions to paying credit card bills and sending electronic cashier’s orders.

Touch login is available on Apple iOS devices with Touch ID sensors and Samsung Android devices with fingerprint sensors. The service is part of StanChart’s UK-based parent $1.5 billion investment in technology announced last year.

Under the programme, in Kenya,  StanChart has this year launched the Retail Workbench, a sales-and-service tool that lets clients open an account in any location and makes banking services such as loan approvals and credit card issuance fast, simple and paperless.