South Africa leads the world in automated cash dispensers, writes Mark Ashurst
EVERY month, a thin line of grandparents and great-grandparents shuffles across the rural landscape of KaNgwane, clutching fresh banknotes dished out by the most sophisticated cash dispensers in the world.
The machines, which are mounted on unmarked pick-up trucks and escorted by armed guards, are pursued across the hillsides by a moving market. Traders carry buckets of freshly butchered meat, caged chickens or an array of traditional medicines. The able-bodied carry the infirm with them in wheelbarrows.
Under makeshift awnings, each pensioner swipes a plastic card through the machine, then rolls a weathered finger across a tiny scanner. The scan checks the print against a digital template and dispenses a monthly pension of about R400.
#The service is run by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) for the rural authorities responsible for pension payments. The company was formed in 1988 as a joint venture between First National Bank and Datakor, the first service being undertaken for the former KwaZulu administration. Now it pays out about 400 000 pensioners across the country. It also handles pension payments in Namibia and unemployment benefits in the Western Cape.
The busiest vehicles carry up to R1-million in cash, much of it destined for areas that can only be reached by four-wheel-drives. Yet despite the sophistication of the technology, the automated system is cheaper to run than a bureaucratic equivalent.
CPS’s business development manager, Willem Joubert, estimates that it costs the taxpayer about 15% less than the old system. And with a little modification, the same machines can be used for voter registration, wage payments and a range of banking services.
Mike Jarvis, general manager of information technology at First National Bank (FNB), believes biometrics – the technologies of identifying natural characteristics unique to an individual – will become the only secure means of activating financial transactions. These include finger and voice prints, retina scanning and image digitalisation – technology tailormade for a market characterised by high crime, widespread fraud and a poor and often illiterate rural population.
This year, FNB’s Technology Innovations Unit carried out the world’s first trial of voice-verification systems at a financial institution. Voice-recognition software that had been developed by United States telephone company AT&T and a subsidiary was installed in cash dispensers as an alternative to pin codes.
Says Gerry Cassidy, head of the unit: “Passwords and pins and cards depend on ownership and knowledge, which are inherently flawed because they can be passed on to others.”
Machines that can recognise a voice without having to understand the language it is speaking could be very useful in South Africa. But in the past year, enthusiasm for voice-verification systems has been surpassed by the introduction of more discriminating 3-D monitors that recognise the unique geometry of a client’s fingers.
“Banks are very sensitive to the rate of false rejections; people who are entitled to a service don’t like to be turned away,” says Cassidy. Fingers get dirty or damaged, but they rarely change shape. The hardware to recognise fingers is already familiar in Europe as a conventional security device, but has never been used in banking.
The latest innovation in banking technology is the smart card, launched this month by two international credit-card companies, Visa, and Mastercard, in association with South African banks. The smart card has a chip implanted in it to monitor a range of transactions.
The cards will enable shopkeepers’ cash registers to deduct money electronically from pre-paid cards, which can be replenished at modified cash dispensers. Marketing departments will be able to track spending habits and provide instant customer profiles.
Cassidy’s favourite innovation is the “smart box”, a mobile cash box that keeps a tally of its contents and transmits an encrypted data stream with a constantly updated record of deposits to its destination bank. This eliminates discrepancies between the bank and its client, a source of controversy for banks everywhere.
The FNB box has an added feature: if tampered with, it sprays its contents with indelible purple ink, much the same as the ink that police used to spray on demonstrators in the 1980s. This makes it difficult for would-be thieves to make off with the proceeds – and brings a whole new meaning to that old wall slogan: the purple shall govern.