Visa International is partnering with Vocent Solutions, a maker of
voice recognition software, to develop voice authentication
technology for use with Visa-brand credit cards. The two companies
will be looking at applications of the biometric security in the
areas of e-commerce, mobile commerce and risk management.
"Voice recognition is one of the ways that we're getting to the
vision of universal commerce - which we refer to as u-commerce -
being able to conduct commerce any time, any way, anywhere you
want," said Georgann Scally, vice-president of strategic alliances
at Visa International.
"To do that, you have to deploy every technology available. We
think voice authentication and recognition are technologies that
show a lot of promise. They're simple, easy, non-invasive and very
accurate," Scally said.
Visa's role in the strategic alliance will be to develop standards
concerning the use of Vocent's voice recognition technology and to
create prototype solutions using that technology. It would then be
up to Vocent and Visa's member financial institutions to decide how
to deploy voice recognition technology - if at all.
However, Scally saw many possible applications for Vocent's
technology.
"Pretty much every PC today comes with built in microphones.
There's also mobile commerce - cell phones or cell phones combined
with PDAs," he said.
Scally also saw room for Vocent's technology in Visa's Verified by
Visa program to secure online credit card transactions, with voice
identification replacing or even supplementing passwords to verify
the identity of the purchaser.
"Vocent would be a great partner in the Verified by Visa space. You
could possibly do three-factor authentication, depending on what
the bank would want to do. Another possibility would be to
eliminate the personal identification number and use voice
instead."
Those solutions, however, will require the development of
technology to send speech pattern information over data channels,
as opposed to phone lines, according to Craig Gould, manager of
marketing and communications at Vocent.
"It's not a product we have today, but we're working towards that
goal," said Gould.
For now, Visa is in the process of deploying Vocent's Voice Secure
Password Reset product internally to enable its 5,000 employees to
reset network passwords through Visa's internal help desk.
Voice Secure works by recording a voice sample for each customer or
employee - typically the sound of that person pronouncing the
numbers zero through to nine. Vocent's software makes a digital
representation of that person's vocal track. That information is
then stored and used for future comparisons.
The identity of subsequent callers is verified by asking each
caller to pronounce a randomly selected sequence of those digits
into the phone receiver. Vocent's software uses sophisticated
algorithms and speech recognition technology to match the caller to
the recorded digital representation of that person's voice. The
random number sequence guards against the use of recorded voices to
trick the system.