Starting in March, Serbians will be able to to pay their bills using a face recognition system, central bank (NBS) Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic has announced.
According to her, the NBS plans to introduce the new service as part of its instant payments solutions, launched last October.
“Customers will be able to make payments using Skype or visual identification,” Tabakovic said, and added:
“This will be something that is truly a revolutionary novelty to complement instant payments. Although we are ready to start immediately, we need to wait for a new evaluation of Serbia’s progress in terms of preventing money laundering in order to launch this new service.”
The exact date will be known after the Moneyval (the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism) meeting on January 23.
At that meeting, Serbia’s progress in applying all regulations to prevent money laundering will be checked, and if the opinion of this institution is positive, “face payments” may begin as early as in February.
New technical solutions are not required in order to make payments using Skype installed on phones and tablets, nor will this cost banks any money, said Tabakovic, and emphasized that this system is “safe for users, both in protecting their personal data and in terms of possible abuses in the shape of money laundering.”
Source; B92
