Update and Correction: VoiceTrust Holding Steps Up Activities in the Middle East

In two separate but related developments, VoiceTrust Holding, the voice biometric company whose majority owner is Ramphastos Investments N.V. (owned by Dutch billionaire Marcel Boekhoorn) has stepped up activities in the Middle East. First, on June 14th, Tariq Habib, the CEO of VoiceTrust Holding announced the formal acquisition of mobile payment specialist VoiceCash Middle East, which it has renamed VoiceTrust eServices MENA (Middle East North Africa).

We wrote about the establishment of VoiceCash Middle East in this post last October. On July 20, a VoiceCash eServices MENA spokesperson provided clarification of the transaction between VoiceTrust Holdings and VoiceCash, saying that it involved “VoiceCash Middle East only and not the whole VoiceCash Group.”

As a reminder, VoiceCash Bank is chartered as a commercial bank that operates in 24 countries. As explained on the company Web site, VoiceCash Bank has been chartered and regulated by the Malta Financial Service Authority (MFSA) since October 2009 and has a Banking License that “has been passported to 23 other European countries.” Under terms of the agreement, it remains a separate, regulated entity.

Next, on June 22, VoiceTrust Holdings formed a joint venture with United Bank Limited (UBL), one of Pakistan’s largest private banks. The purpose of the joint venture is to implement VoiceTrust’s flagship technology, Proof-of-Life™, initially to support secure payments from mobile wallets. The joint venture paves the way for a number of services that will be announced soon, where the use of voice biometrics for user authentication, as well as liveness testing will support G2P (Government 2 Person) payments and international remittances (as well as mobile payments) in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman (members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC) and the United States.

UBL has an extensive network of over 1,100 branches in Pakistan, plus overseas branches, representative offices or joint ventures in 11 countries. It has a proprietary payments platform that provides account opening, bill payment, fund transfer, cash transfer facilities. When integrated with VoiceTrust’s set of voice biometric security technologies, the objective is to provide stronger customer authentication in a way that is convenient, low-cost and scalable. While VoiceTrust claims that “millions” of users are benefiting from its authentication technology, it provided no estimate of the number of registered users for mobile payments.

Still, Atif Bokhari, President & CEO, United Bank Limited sees the partnership providing the “unique opportunity of replacing PIN based authentication at the POS with biometric voice recognition,” and adds that, in conjunction with VoiceTrust, his company will evaluate the possibility of using the technology in a number of areas, “not just branchless banking.”