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To a needy mother, a fingerprint’s as good as a PIN

November 12, 2013 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC

I have just attended the latest user event put on jointly by the NonStop user community and HP. Among the participants were many from the financial services marketplace, as NonStop continues to underpin many of the world's biggest ATM networks.

Interest in all things NonStop is on the rebound as the price of systems comes down — and could come down further still — solutions have the potential to become even cheaper. And with the latest announcements from HP, interest is bound to get even bigger.

The news from HP, provided in a presentation by newly appointed VP and GM of Integrity Servers, Randy Meyer, was the unveiling of the plan for HP NonStop servers to add support for Intel's x86 architecture.

With this unveiling, the HP NonStop product family not only expands to include two chip architectures, but also allows them to share the same c7000 blade enclosure (making upgrades easier; introduces support of InfiniBand for clustering (as the x86 replacement of ServerNet used today with the Itanium architecture); and supports connections with existing Itanium-based NonStop systems via Expand-over-IP, allowing NonStop customers to mix and match to their hearts' (and pocketbooks') content.

However, it wasn't just presentations by HP about NonStop on x86 that caught my attention, but also a presentation by one of the financial solutions vendors. A promotional blurb for a presentation by payments solutions provider OmniPayments said the company was processing more than 700 million transactions per month at a large U.S. bank (see "Changing my central nervous system …"). It also described how Mexico's Casa Ley implemented OmniPayments to replace their ACI BASE24 solution within the short span of six months.

However, it was the final reference in the promotional material that grabbed my attention, as it mentioned an implementation of OmniPayments by Carvajal in which the company would be switching all transactions in Colombia, and using biometric ID.

Building on material published in the Sept.–Oct. issue of the NonStop community magazine, The Connection, OmniPayments CEO Yash Kapadia gave a presentation about the success his company had enjoyed in 2013.

Yash has been a go-to executive for me when it comes to blogging about what's really happening across the ATM marketplace. He is among the few executives who are candid about their business amid growing competition, yet he continues to enjoy success — often in unusual applications of his products.

In his presentation, Yash covered the work his company has done in Colombia, which featured prominently in his article for The Connection, "Colombia's Social Programs Supported by NonStop."

"The Colombian government has put into place a social safety net for poor mothers who have difficulty feeding, educating and maintaining health care for their children," Yash wrote in the article. "Funded in part by the World Bank, Colombia's social program makes cash distribution to eligible mothers twice monthly."

Yash explained that mothers who qualified were given the equivalent of debit cards.

"When a mother enrolls, she registers her personal information, including her national ID number and her ten fingerprints, which are digitally encoded by wave scalar quantization technology.This information is sent by the enrollment POS terminal to OmniPayments, where it is stored in the OmniPayments biometric image server."

It then becomes a simple matter for the enrolee to go to an ATM and withdraw the cash she needs. As for the fingerprint feature, this is one of the complementary biometric options with the OmniPayments solution. While not universally deployed by all users of OmniPayments, the technology provides a much needed option in Colombia.

"Fingerprint verification solves two problems that may be common amongst poor mothers, especially in rural areas," Yash wrote in his article. "They can misplace their cards, or they can forget their PINs, but they still can receive their cash."

When I talked to Yash about his support of biometrics, he referred me to his article, saying, "Fingerprints are more secure than PINs. They cannot be forgotten, they cannot be stolen, and they cannot be imitated".

And what of the HP announcements this past week?

"With the x86 architecture in the plan, this changes the game for NonStop users and prospects everywhere. They will have options and this will be a new experience for them," Yash told me during a break at the event. "We are ready — HP ensures application compatibility and while we trust, we plan on taking up the chance to test and to validate out solution."

The announcements from HP will certainly cause more than a ripple to spread across the ATM community, just as they are doing right now across the NonStop community.

The deployment of NonStop in support of innovative solutions for payments will continue, thanks to the likes of Yash and OmniPayments. And there will be even more novel ways introduced to access cash. Whatever these might be, cash will continue to anchor programs for the advancement of nations and I see no letup in the reliance on it anytime soon.

About Richard Buckle

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Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.

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