UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 3, 2019. Starting July 1, 115 branches operated by the Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) will be able to collect customers’ biometric data, the bank’s press service reports.

The procedure involves making the customer’s full-face photograph and taking a voice sample. The data will get entered into a single biometric system. Everything is done free of charge.

‘There are 46 locations in Sverdlovsk Region that have all the necessary equipment, as well as 14 in Chelyabinsk Region, 7 in Bashkortostan, 5 in Leningrad Region, 4 in Kirov Region, 4 in Perm Territory, 3 in Saratov Region, 2 in Voronezh Region, Moscow, Moscow Region, Novosibirsk Region, Orenburg Region, Samara Region, Udmurtia, Tatarstan, and Khanty-Mansiysky Autonomous Region each, and one in Altay Territory, Astrakhan Region, Belgorod Region, Volgograd Region, Kemerovo Region, Kurgan Region, Kursk Region, Lipetsk Region, Nizhniy Novgorod Region, Omsk Region, Rostov Region, Tomsk Region, Tyumen Region, and Ulyanovsk Region each,’ the press service says.

This is the second stage of the biometric campaign, according to which at least 60% of the bank’s branches are expected to be able to offer biometry-based services by June 30, 2019; by the end of the year, 100% of the bank’s branches are expected to be able to do so.

‘The UBRD is scheduled to start offering biometry-supported banking services to customers in 2020,’ says the bank’s IT Director Andrei Obukhov.