Excerpts from a Fowler interview last month:
"Identix and Motorola, the world's largest producer of
semi-conductors, . . . recently announced an alliance to produce biometrics devices that will replace the PIN or numeric code used to gain access to banking networks. The alliance enables the Sunnyvale, CA, Identix to reduce the cost of its technology.
" . . . Identix is an acknowledged leader in image scanning software, and has refined the technology so that it can, for example, detect the difference between a fingerprint and a picture of one.If a banking customer is at an ATM and a robber jumps from the bushes, the Identix scanner can recognize a distress finger to let the bank know there's trouble.
"Meanwhile, . . . Motorola's Digital DNA division has become a kind of pipeline to the marketplace for its latest R&D. For example, its microprocessor chips, a crucial component of smaller scanning devices, were not reliable for ATMs because of their heat sensitivity as well as the expensive hardware that had to surround the chips in optical devices. But now, the semi-conductors, or CMOS-chips, that store the fingerprint optics are as hearty as they are thin and small.
"Using Motorola's global manufacturing heft, the companies can create a device that s no thicker than a piece of silicon and no bigger than a thumbprint, that can actually be stuck on the side of anything a phone, cash register, credit card reader or ATM
. . . .
"Elsewhere, Peru s $600 million-asset Bancosur has wired about one thousand employee computers with the scanning technology for about $700 per unit. And Bank of America has begun beta testing a smart card that uses embedded fingerprints. Still, Fowler concedes that the adoption rate among financial service providers also depends on the pace of change within their infrastructure. And that's no Internet clock.
"I don't see banks buying this product in quantities of 20,000 just because they happen to have 20,000 seats across the enterprise, says Fowler. I do see it moving 500 units at a time as computers are replaced." (Future Banker, July 5, 1999)
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This interview sheds a little more light on the MOT alliance, and indicates that IDX is aiming at the ATM market now. |
