Microsoft has announced a five-year partnership with the National Australia Bank (NAB) to develop and invest in NABโs and Bank of New Zealandโs 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 NABโs apps on Microsoft Azure as the primary cloud service, and other cloud services as the secondary cloud if needed.
โThe needs of our customers havenโt changed but their expectations of how we deliver a more personalized service has,โ said NABโs chief of Technology and Enterprise Operations Patrick Wright.
โTo 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.
โThe investment weโve made in technology to date has built a strong, cloud-first foundation thatโs enabled colleagues to execute better and deliver much better experiences for our customers. Weโre thrilled to have Microsoftโs support and investment in this partnership, to further shift the bank to the cloud.
โTogether, 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.