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Microsoft partners with banks to introduce facial recognition

More invasive technology.

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Microsoft has announced a five-year partnership with the National Australia Bank (NAB) to develop and invest in NABโ€™s and Bank of New Zealandโ€™s multi-cloud technology. The two organizations are looking into ways of identifying customers using facial recognition.

The partnership will see the development of a multi-cloud ecosystem that will host 1,000 of NABโ€™s apps on Microsoft Azure as the primary cloud service, and other cloud services as the secondary cloud if needed.

โ€œThe needs of our customers havenโ€™t changed but their expectations of how we deliver a more personalized service has,โ€ said NABโ€™s chief of Technology and Enterprise Operations Patrick Wright.

โ€œTo deliver for customers, we need to invest in the latest technology, leveraging global leaders like Microsoft to help us bring new services to our customers, quickly and at scale.

โ€œThe investment weโ€™ve made in technology to date has built a strong, cloud-first foundation thatโ€™s enabled colleagues to execute better and deliver much better experiences for our customers. Weโ€™re thrilled to have Microsoftโ€™s support and investment in this partnership, to further shift the bank to the cloud.

โ€œTogether, we will improve the resilience of NAB and BNZ banking services and reduce development timelines for system changes and improvements, from six weeks to as little as two days.โ€

NAB has been looking into biometrics, including behavioral and voice systems. It is already working on a proof of concept to demonstrate how facial recognition could replace the need of a debit card at an ATM. However, a PIN for authentication would still be needed after the face verification.

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