This article discusses deploying bank ATM machines in rural India where access is controlled by fingerprint biometrics alone. As has been demonstrated many times, biometrics like fingerprints are not secret, and they can easily copied, stolen, and reproduced. The challenge of doing authentication with an illiterate population is daunting, but biometrics alone is not the solution.
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The increase will mean that just about every rural village and outpost will have access to the world’s financial backbone and, if the pilot program is successful, fingerprint identification could become standard, even for private bank transactions.
“Many banks here are keen on this idea of doing away with ATM cards,” said Sunil Udupa, CEO of AGS Infotech, the company supplying the first batch of ATMs to the five districts in India. “Whether it is practically possible is a very different question, but the interest is huge.”
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