At this weeks Purchasing Card Forum, Nick Ogden, founder of WorldPay and currently chairman and CEO of Voice Commerce Group presented the use of voice recognition as the next big thing in security. He outlined that so far the methods used for card security have all been found to have fallen short and a straw poll of the audience appeared to justify his statement. However, I did ask follow up questions to clarify that voice security is not just another fanciful solution, ready to be blown apart by today's clever criminals.

The obvious question was how unique is a persons voice? Nick said that as far as can be proved everyone's voice is unique. But what about imitators and Nick again batted this question back with the response that voice impersonator Rory Bremner had been engaged to try and break the system and failed.

What about background noise distorting the voice? But again Nick retorted that the system would simply recall you. However, this does seem to be a weak aspect as it is not always convenient to have to wait for a recall and no guarantee that any recall would be at an acceptable location or at an agreeable time.

What about recording the card holder's voice and then fraudsters taking the place of the account holder? Again this can be detected by the system according to Nick.

As fraudulent activity is on the increase and with electronic payments and receipts becoming more the norm, the idea to introduce new technology to strengthen security has to be applauded. I have no idea if voice recognition is the final answer or the forerunner of yet another idea but it's very comforting to learn that there are people putting their brains and efforts into finding the final security solution.

By Gary Wright, MSI

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To see Stephen Wilson's comments  and Nick Response on this blog click here