Facial Recognition Authentication Adds an Extra Layer of Security to Mobile Banking Systems

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobile banking usage has increased significantly over the last two years. People all over the world prefer mobile banking to other banking options such as ATMs and internet banking. With more concurrent mobile banking users, hackers and cyber criminals are more likely to target mobile users. As a result, the researcher decided to conduct a study on the current mobile banking system, with the goal of developing a secure mobile banking system that uses face recognition. The research concentrated on the security of existing mobile banking applications. The researcher conducted literature reviews and comparisons of existing mobile banking applications to gain additional knowledge for a deeper understanding of the topic. The developer also researched the methodologies and technical components required for this project. After tallying the data, it was discovered that more than half of the participants stated that their current mobile banking application does not support biometrics authentication. In addition, some of the participants added that mobile banking fraud still exists and some of them have experienced it or at least know about others who were victim to such criminal act. In this paper, research will be conducted on the nature of mobile banking systems provided by several well-known banks or financial institutions in terms of its security. Comparative study will also be done between the implementation of OTP as the current last-step verification and Facial Recognition as a proposed last-step verification. Finally, a proposed method on why facial recognition is better than OTP and how it should be integrated to a mobile banking system to create an in-depth layer of security will be unraveled.