Singaporean bank puts your iPhone’s fingerprint scanner to good use

Photo credit: OCBC.

If you live in Singapore, that Touch ID function on your iPhone is getting more useful by the day. First with the launch of Apple Pay in Singapore last week and now with OCBC bank’s Business Mobile Banking app.

The app is for users of OCBC’s Velocity@ocbc business banking portal who want to check out their account balance, debit card transactions, and incoming and outgoing funds. It uses biometric authentication – the first banking app to do so, according to OCBC.

The authentication method is called OCBC OneTouch.

The authentication method is called OCBC OneTouch and it uses Apple’s Touch ID technology to verify the rightful owner of the account by their fingerprints. This approach eschews traditional authentication methods like user ID and password, which aren’t as secure. The bank says that over 120,000 customers will benefit from the app.

The OneTouch feature works on all Touch ID-enabled iPhones – from iPhone 5s onwards – that run iOS 8 or later.

OCBC says it chose the app’s main functions based on a customer focus group in January 2015. It also relied on the type of enquiries its business banking call centers received between 2013 and 2015. Calls about these particular tasks increased by 30 percent during that two-year period, the bank claims.

The Business Mobile Banking app is also available for Android phones running Android 4.0 and later, but doesn’t seem to use Android’s own fingerprint sensor feature, relying instead on two-step authentication through a customer’s security token or SMS.

OCBC recently announced Apple Watch support for its personal banking mobile app.

Its fintech inclubator, The Open Vault, launched in February and is currently reviewing applications from hopeful startups. It should lead to more tech-related offerings from the Singaporean bank.