Barclays is ditching passwords for telephone voice recognition.

Barclays customers will soon be able to access their telephone banking account using voice recognition instead of a password. The update will be available to all customers by the end of August. The Voice Security technology will replace passwords and pins with a customer’s voice print to confirm identification. Barclays said voice prints would be made up of over 100 unique characteristics based on the physical shape of a speaker’s mouth and throat. Earlier this year, the Financial Fraud Action (FFA) revealed that losses due to telephone banking fraud rose by 92 per cent in 2015 to £32.3 million and greater adoption of technologies such as voice recognition could help stem the flow. In March TalkTalk also announced that it would use voice recognition technology to verify customers’ identities using voice prints following a large-scale hack on its internal systems. Each time a customer calls, the technology will compare their voice against the voice print to establish a match using the first few words spoken. Barclays was the first European bank to launch voice recognition technology to customers in May 2013. HSBC also revealed plans to use voice recognition software for telephone banking. Many banks, websites and apps, including Lloyds, Amazon and Evernote, are also now using fingerprints to verify identities through technology such as Apple’s Touch ID, Google Pay and Samsung’s Finger Scanner. Continue