Banking plan needs rethink

Banking plan needs rethink

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is back to strongly pushing for what seems an ill-considered plan to boost mobile banking. The NBTC now is ordering mobile phone companies to instal equipment to store customers' fingerprints. As the commission cannot order mobile customers to give their fingerprints, which is good news, Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the commission "urges all mobile users to participate".

Mr Takorn unveiled his plan for the NBTC to command and control a new mobile banking service. Under the plan, mobile phone users -- almost everyone in Thailand -- would voluntarily give their fingerprints to their phone companies. In turn, the companies would send the prints to the NBTC for storage on what Mr Takorn claims will be a secure, online fingerprint database. He has provided no details so far on how such a database could be secure.

The NBTC's plans to get involved in online banking comes in the wake of a parallel system. PromptPay was pushed hard by the government as a convenient way for consumers to quickly and easily transfer money from their bank accounts -- much like the NBTC plans to do. Earlier this year, the government and banks put heavy pressure on the public to sign up.

Since last month, of course, PromptPay has gone silent. Billed for months as ready to launch on Nov 1, PromptPay raised concerns among bank security experts. If the system had been put online, thefts would have occurred.

Raising further concerns, the Bank of Thailand had already warned that banks were granted immunity in those instances, and any losses would be the responsibility of the customers.

PromptPay, despite the doubts, profited and benefited from the presence of actual security experts who are attempting to fix security shortcomings in the system and its planned smartphone apps. A relaunch of PromptPay is likely, although just how confident consumers will be about the second effort remains to be seen.

The NBTC has not revealed any security oversight in its scheme for banking via fingerprints. Mr Takorn said last weekend that the Engineering Faculty of Kasetsart University submitted a successful bid of 15 million baht to run the whole system. It is important to remember that "successful" in this case means "low".

Fingerprint banking sounds so convenient, but wise consumers will wonder why no other country has instituted it. Some banks in Britain have begun to roll out such a system, but the fingerprints are not taken or stored in any database such as Mr Takorn has described. There is no storage of fingerprints at all. Only encrypted information describing the prints is kept, and no one can make copies.

This last part is important, given that an employee of the country's largest mobile phone company already has been caught stealing "private" customer information that allowed the customer's bank account to be emptied. In Mr Takorn's plan, customers will give their fingerprints to one or more employees of their phone company. After that, the whole system will work on trust.

The NBTC, which has no background in banking or in online security, should rethink its plans. For now, consumers will not trust its project. Banking by mobile phone is much more complicated than having an app produced by the lowest bidder.

Convenient online banking is an excellent goal. It can only succeed if it is highly secure system that is trusted by consumers. Mr Takorn must now go back to the drawing board and rethink his plan for mandatory fingerprinting. The public is correct in being sceptical of the project he describes.

Editorial

Bangkok Post editorial column

These editorials represent Bangkok Post thoughts about current issues and situations.

Email : anchaleek@bangkokpost.co.th

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT (17)