Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey) region, became the first bank in the region to allow new customers to have their identity documents verified using contactless NFC technology when opening a bank account via its Mobile Banking App.

The bank's TruID solution uses NFC technology to read information from embedded chips in the documents and seamlessly extract data to autofill a digital account application. The customer is then prompted to take a selfie within the app to complete the process.

Emirates NBD's TruID digital identity verification solution was developed as part of the bank's collaboration with fintechs VisionLabs and Smart Engines. Apple users can have their biometric passports read using the NFC technology, while Android users can avail electronic reading of both Emirates ID and their biometric passports.

Commenting on the introduction of Emirates NBD's TruID digital identity verification solution, Suvo Sarkar, Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management said: “As a front-runner in digital banking innovation, Emirates NBD continues to leverage technology to deliver superior customer experiences. Our mobile account opening service is being increasingly used by customers to open a new account instantly from their smartphones and this new verification solution ensures a more secure and robust process.”

Commenting on the collaboration with Emirates NBD, Anton Nazarkin, International Development Director at VisionLabs B.V., said: “I am proud that VisionLabs has become a part of the bank’s technology stack and would like to thank Emirates NBD team for their efforts in creating this next generation banking solution with us. I am sure that the positive experience with our KYC solution will enable further expansion of services based on biometrics in the bank for its customers and employees.”

Nikita Arlazarov, Chief Financial Officer at Smart Engines, added: “Entering the Middle East market with Emirates NBD is an important milestone for us and I thank them for their trust in us. Not only were we able to support and fine tune data extraction for region-specific ID types, we have also developed a technology for Arabic character recognition in the process.”

An early mover in banking digitization and innovation, Emirates NBD's advanced digital infrastructure has enabled it to continue offering seamless banking services to customers despite COVID-19 related restrictions.