BANGKOK (Xinhua) — The Thai central bank on Thursday announced that it has given the green light for six commercial banks to offer facial recognition using the electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) technology to verify the identity of new customers when opening online deposit accounts.
The six banks are Kasikornbank, Bangkok Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, Bank of Ayudhya, TMB Bank and CIMB Thai Bank, said Siritida Panomwan na Ayudhya, assistant governor for the Bank of Thailand (BoT).
The BoT has permitted commercial banks to verify the identity of customers using the National Digital ID platform, enabling people to open deposit accounts through the digital channel without presenting themselves at branches and reduce filling out paper forms, said Siritida, who is in charge of BoT’s payment systems policy and financial group.
Siritida said in the press briefing that the Thai commercial banks using the biometric verification is capable of preventing identity theft and fraud.
However, the assistant governor said that the BoT will assess the service offering results before expanding to a broader scale later.
