The Bank of Thailand has allowed six commercial banks to offer facial recognition for electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) technology to verify the identity of new customers under the regulatory sandbox 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 central bank’s payment systems policy and financial group.
These banks are now permitted to verify the identity of customers who use other banks’ financial services through the National Digital ID platform, enabling people to open deposit accounts through the digital channel without presenting themselves at branches and reduce filling out duplicate information, Ms Siritida said.
She gave assurances that biometric verification is capable of preventing identity theft and fraud.
The Bank of Thailand will assess the service offering results before expanding to a broader scale later.
The central bank will encourage commercial banks to apply e-KYC to other financial services and allow non-bank financial institutions to adopt the technology, Ms Siritida said.