Biometrics: whoever doesn’t hide is in the Unified Biometric System
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:46 am
Evgeny Ermoolenko, Director of Business Development at the Center for Biometric Technologies (Unified Biometric System, EBS), announced at the Ecom Retail Week on October 11 that the Bank of Russia, JSC National Payment Card System (NSPK) and EBS will launch a bioacquiring pilot: the pilot group will include several trade and service enterprises and banks. "By the end of the year, we expect to see the first implementations of bioacquiring and its application in online and offline payments," he said.
According to Evgeny belgium whatsapp resource Ermoolenko, bioacquiring will become part of the fast payment system (FPS): the user will be authenticated using biometric personal data and debit money from the linked bank account for payment.
"To provide services, the state information system EBS uses not photographs, but vectors - sequences of symbols generated by a neural network based on images," he explained.
"Most likely, the first to implement the bio-acquiring functionality of the SBP and be able to offer the service to clients will be e-com companies," Evgeny Ermoolenko told a ComNews correspondent.
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According to VTsIOM, 71% of Russians have no experience of submitting biometrics, and 39% have no idea what it is. While the Center for Biometric Technologies calculated that half of Russia's residents have already submitted biometric data (face image) - 75 million people out of 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation.
Evgeny Osminin, Director of Development and Digital Transformation at JSC Razumnye Delovye Tekhnologii (RDTECH), believes that bioacquiring is one of the most promising authentication methods: it provides more reliable client identification and protection against password loss.
In addition, bioacquiring, according to Evgeny Osminin, can confirm transactions and remove restrictions on transfer amounts, and will also reduce the time spent on the traditional authentication process. "Bioacquiring has marketing potential and can also increase the popularity of the service among young people," he added.
Andrey Fedorets, head of the Association of Russian Banks Committee on Banking Security and deputy general director of BSS, believes that using the SBP with the help of bioacquiring is beneficial for sellers of goods and services, since the cost of acquiring by bank card is several times higher than the losses when accepting payments via the SBP. "Bioacquiring will be useful at points of stores where there is a lot of traffic and where you need to try to avoid queues, since bioacquiring is much faster than any other payment method," he added.
Security of the Unified Biological System
When asked by a ComNews correspondent how safe it is to use vectors of people's images as a payment instrument, Andrey Fedorets replied that the Unified Biometric System is one of the most secure repositories of sensitive information in the world: it does not store photographs, but mathematical models (vectors) of images from which it is impossible to restore a photograph.
"This vector very accurately describes the image of the face. Therefore, when you look into the camera at the checkout, the program controlling this camera will determine that this is not some kind of mask or someone's fraudulent photo. Very complex algorithms are used to determine the possibility of substitution, which will determine that this is not a "fake", but a living person looking into the camera. After it is determined that this is a living person, the smart program will take the best frame from the video stream and send it to the EBS. There, a vector, that is, a mathematical model, will be made from this frame and compared with the mathematical model already stored in the EBS. No one will be able to use the data stored in the EBS except for comparing vectors. Therefore, remote biometric identification is reliable and safe," concluded Andrey Fedorets.
Read also
According to Evgeny belgium whatsapp resource Ermoolenko, bioacquiring will become part of the fast payment system (FPS): the user will be authenticated using biometric personal data and debit money from the linked bank account for payment.
"To provide services, the state information system EBS uses not photographs, but vectors - sequences of symbols generated by a neural network based on images," he explained.
"Most likely, the first to implement the bio-acquiring functionality of the SBP and be able to offer the service to clients will be e-com companies," Evgeny Ermoolenko told a ComNews correspondent.
Read also
According to VTsIOM, 71% of Russians have no experience of submitting biometrics, and 39% have no idea what it is. While the Center for Biometric Technologies calculated that half of Russia's residents have already submitted biometric data (face image) - 75 million people out of 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation.
Evgeny Osminin, Director of Development and Digital Transformation at JSC Razumnye Delovye Tekhnologii (RDTECH), believes that bioacquiring is one of the most promising authentication methods: it provides more reliable client identification and protection against password loss.
In addition, bioacquiring, according to Evgeny Osminin, can confirm transactions and remove restrictions on transfer amounts, and will also reduce the time spent on the traditional authentication process. "Bioacquiring has marketing potential and can also increase the popularity of the service among young people," he added.
Andrey Fedorets, head of the Association of Russian Banks Committee on Banking Security and deputy general director of BSS, believes that using the SBP with the help of bioacquiring is beneficial for sellers of goods and services, since the cost of acquiring by bank card is several times higher than the losses when accepting payments via the SBP. "Bioacquiring will be useful at points of stores where there is a lot of traffic and where you need to try to avoid queues, since bioacquiring is much faster than any other payment method," he added.
Security of the Unified Biological System
When asked by a ComNews correspondent how safe it is to use vectors of people's images as a payment instrument, Andrey Fedorets replied that the Unified Biometric System is one of the most secure repositories of sensitive information in the world: it does not store photographs, but mathematical models (vectors) of images from which it is impossible to restore a photograph.
"This vector very accurately describes the image of the face. Therefore, when you look into the camera at the checkout, the program controlling this camera will determine that this is not some kind of mask or someone's fraudulent photo. Very complex algorithms are used to determine the possibility of substitution, which will determine that this is not a "fake", but a living person looking into the camera. After it is determined that this is a living person, the smart program will take the best frame from the video stream and send it to the EBS. There, a vector, that is, a mathematical model, will be made from this frame and compared with the mathematical model already stored in the EBS. No one will be able to use the data stored in the EBS except for comparing vectors. Therefore, remote biometric identification is reliable and safe," concluded Andrey Fedorets.
Read also