[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]TSYS (NYSE: TSS) announced today that its leading Vietnamese client, Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank — Vietnam Eximbank, has begun to deploy fingerprint authentication technology for over-the-counter or ATM transactions.

Vietnam Eximbank is one of the first banks in Vietnam to apply this technology that enables customers to make a transaction without having the physical card, ID, phone or card number present for identification, and uses only fingerprint verification when performing transactions at the counter or at the ATM.

As a client of TSYS since 2003, Vietnam Eximbank licenses TSYS’ PRIME single-platform payment processing solution to manage its issuing, acquiring and payment acceptance services. The rollout of Eximbank’s Transaction Identification and Authentication solution was enabled by leveraging Fingerprint Technology solutions and supporting technology within TSYS PRIME ATM controller and online secure authentication messaging functionality.

Vietnam Eximbank is planning to extend the biometric solution to point-of-sale networks where fingerprints can be used instead of ID and payment cards. It plans to make these types of transactions common across Vietnam by working with other banks in the country to build acceptance of its fingerprint authentication solution as the de facto standard deployed across the national switch.

“Ease of payments is central to the Eximbank vision of financial inclusion and the implementation of transaction identification and authentication with the support of TSYS and Fingerprint Technology is key to achieving this objective,” said Mr. Mitsuaki Shiogo, vice president, Eximbank.

“Eximbank’s initiatives in launching card-not-present, fingerprint authenticated transactions, demonstrate that it is a leading innovator of advanced banking technologies in the Asia Pacific region,” said Amit Sethi, managing director of Asia, Middle East and Africa, TSYS International. “We are delighted to be working closely with the bank and supporting its financial inclusion strategy, sharing the extensive strengths of our licensed PRIME solution combined with our expertise as a leading global payment solutions provider.”