Seoul, Republic of Korea, November 17, 2015
IRIS ID made an announcement on January 17 about the strategic tie-up (MOU) with Woori Bank for the joint development of the fintech business model.
President and CEO Kwang-goo Lee of Woori Bank said, “This MOU holds a great significance for it laid the foundation not only for the collaboration between bank and fintech company but also for the cooperation between fintech companies,” and emphasized, “We will make substantial contribution to the development of fintech industry through investment in and support for fintech companies.”
Woori Bank decided to apply the IrisAccess, the iris recognition technology of IRIS ID, to ATM withdrawal, safety deposit box approval, and access control within this year.
If the pilot project ends in success, approximately 20 million clients of Woori Bank will be able to use the financial transaction service based on convenient and safe personal authentication system by going through a simple registration procedure at any of 967 branches of Woori Bank around Korea.
Existing ATM and financial transaction only depended on password and PIN for authentication and involved great risks such as loss of card and leakage of password. Furthermore, there were always risks of unauthorized reproduction of the card.
However, this MOU raises hopes for much stronger security system for the new ATM of Woori Bank will use the unique iris information and the password simultaneously.
“IRIS ID has been noted for excellent technology outside Korea as much as 99% of its sales is produced in the overseas market including North America, Europe, and the Middle East albeit little recognition inside Korea,” said CEO of Ja-geuk Koo of IRIS ID, “We will join the fintech business with Woori Bank through this MOU and take it as a chance to demonstrate the advanced iris recognition technology in the domestic market as well.”
Iris recognition is known to have high discrimination capacity and excellent accuracy compared with other biometric identification methods and is considered as the personal authentication method to replace fingerprint, vein, or face recognition systems. It is expected that the iris information will be encrypted and used up to the transaction with another bank through the connection with each bank network.
The IrisAccess, the iris recognition system of IRIS ID, has been adopted by national ID projects of India, Mexico, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Somalia and operated in US CDC, Pentagon, US Department of State, US Department of Defense, US Homeland Security, 29 major airports of Canada, LA Airport, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Dubai Airport, and New Qatar Airport. IrisAccess has also been adopted by leading companies such as Apple, Cisco, Google, Toyota, City Bank, TD Bank, and Aramco.