Citigroup To Trial Iris-scanning ATMs

If you want to take money out of the ATM, insert your card, enter your PIN, choose the amount, and you’re good to go. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? For the most part it is also pretty secure, unless the ATM has a card skimmer in which we guess that would be a story for another day.

However a report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Citigroup will be trialing out ATMs that won’t rely on cards. So how will the machine identify you? By using technology that is already employed on certain smartphones and computers, and that is through scanning your iris.

However based on what we hear, it doesn’t sound very convenient. According to the report, it claims that the machines might not even feature a screen or a touchpad. Instead customers will need to log into their bank account via a mobile app ahead of time, select the amount they want to withdraw, and approach the machine.

The machine will then scan their iris and if verified, will then produce the money they had preselected. This does seem like a more secure solution, but like we said, not particularly convenient as sometimes we don’t really make plans to go to the ATM, meaning that getting money out this way would be longer and more convoluted.

Whether or not this system will be well-received by the public remains to be seen, but it is an interesting proposition nonetheless.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets, General
Tags: citigroup, Security