The Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM) will be adopting facial recognition technology for mainland withdrawals made by Visa and Mastercard cardholders at automated teller machines (ATMs) in September, according to a report by Oriental Daily News.
The facial recognition technology is currently being used at some ATMs for Union Pay customers, as part of local efforts to tackle money laundering and the Central Government’s objective to curb capital outflows from the mainland. Now, media reports say that the regulations will be extended to mainland cardholders of other major card-issuing companies.
Local residents will not be required to use the facial recognition technology when withdrawing money from cash machines using cards registered to a Macau account.
The Times attempted to confirm the above information with AMCM, but did not receive a response by press time.
According to the report, the banking industry in Hong Kong believes that if Macau implements the policy over withdrawals made using Visa and Mastercard bank cards, the government can fully supervise mainland residents withdrawing money in Macau.
Comments in the report also indicated that adopting facial recognition technology can help the supervising entity and the Macau government to gain insight into mainland residents’ capital flow abroad.
On July 4, AMCM requested that ATMs which do not have know- your-customer (KYC) technology installed to suspend cash withdrawal services for mainland China UnionPay (CUP) cards to protect the legal interests of financial institutions and CUP cardholders, and to ensure the effectiveness of monitoring ATM cash withdrawals by mainland CUP cards.
Along with the rapid economic and banking development of Macau, self-service banking has been continuously optimized as the use of mainland bank cards has become increasingly popular in Macau.
AMCM has requested banks to implement KYC technology in cash machines so as to improve the verification of cardholders’ identity. The use of facial recognition technology is aimed at promoting the integrity of the financial system of Macau and at enhancing the protection of the legal rights of mainland cardholders, according to AMCM.
Up until July 2, there were 834 ATMs equipped with KYC technology.
Mainland visitors are currently permitted to withdraw up to RMB100,000 when abroad and exchange up to USD50,000 in foreign currency each year.
A separate but related regulation stipulates that UnionPay cardholders from China may withdraw up to RMB10,000 each day for every card in their possession.
Consequently, a number of mainland visitors formerly acquired multiple UnionPay cards – often under different aliases or registered to other people – so as to repeatedly withdraw funds abroad.
The implementation of facial recognition technology aimed to put a halt to this practice, by ensuring that the person using the bank card was the same as the person who had registered for the associated bank account.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority had previously said it was considering a similar rollout in the neighboring territory, but abandoned the plan at some point between May and August 2017, on the basis of the findings from a study on the feasibility and cost efficiency of the technology and other types of biometric authentication systems. JZ
