Bank will ID its customers by pattern of eye’s iris

Posted at 10:00 p.m. PDT Thursday, May 13, 1999

HOUSTON (AP) — If you can’t tell identical twins Michael and Richard Swartz apart, look them in the eyes.

On Thursday, Bank United of Texas became the first in the United States to offer iris recognition technology at automatic teller machines, providing the Swartzes and other customers a cardless, password-free way to get their money out of an ATM.

“It knows you just by looking at you,” says Ron Coben, Bank United’s executive vice president. “There’s no card to show, there’s no fingers to ink, no customer inconvenience or discomfort. It’s just a photograph of a Bank United customer’s eyes.”

Here’s how it works. A customer has a close-up photo of his eye taken at the bank, and the picture is stored in a computer. When the customer goes up to the ATM to take out money, he presses a button to start an eye scan. The ATM then matches the picture of the iris with the one stored in the bank’s database to confirm the customer’s identity.

To demonstrate, Richard Swartz, a 25-year-old Rice University graduate student, had his iris photographed by a bank employee. Minutes later, Swartz was able to withdraw $40 from his account, without inserting a card or punching in a secret identification code.

“Access denied!”

Then, Swartz’s brother Michael took his turn at the machine. But since his iris didn’t match his brother’s, the ATM refused to give him access.

Iris identification — already used by at 11 banks outside the United States — is expected to help reduce the use of cards and passwords, not only at the cash machine but eventually in many other kinds of financial transactions.

The iris recognition and software process in this case was invented a few years ago by Dr. John Daughman, of Cambridge University in England. It’s marketed in this country to financial institutions by Sensar Inc., of Moorestown, N.J.

The iris is the best part of the eye to use as a identifier because there are no known diseases of the iris and eye surgery is not performed on the iris, officials said.

Bank United’s iris project is the result of a partnership with Sensar, which holds a license to the technology from IriScan of Marlton, N.J., and ATM-maker Diebold Inc., which unveiled their first teller machine in 1966.

“This event clearly establishes iris identification as the emerging standard in personal electronic identification,” said Robert Van Naarden, Sensar’s vice president of marketing and customer service. “Iris identification is the most secure, robust and stable form of identification known to man. It is far safer, faster, more secure and accurate than DNA testing.”

Several other U.S. banks are expected to unveil iris identification teller machines later this year. Responding to questions about privacy concerns, Bank United officials said the iris pictures would not be distributed to anyone outside the bank.

Financial analysts consider the system a better way to bank.

A ’physical credential’

“It’s a better security system,” said Ted Julian, an analyst who covers the industry for Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. “You not only have to know something, but you have to have something, some physical credential.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” said Jackie Fenn, analyst for Gartner Group of Stamford, Conn. “Iris recognition is probably the most accurate at this point . There’s nothing beaming into your eye.”

For the techno-junkie, there’s another attractive attribute.

“It has a very high ’cool’ factor,” Coben said. “We think of it as James Bond meets stocks and bonds.”