ING Bank in the Netherlands has released a new feature on its mobile banking app that allows customers to access their bank accounts and make payments using only their voices

With the app, titled Inge, customers can log into their bank account, check balances and make transfers utilising their voice with samples already stored within a database. It measures unique features such as the shape of vocal cavities and mode of delivering speech.

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The app was launched in September 2014 and was the first bank in Europe to introduce a voice control mode in its mobile banking app and enabled hands-free banking as an alternative to a touch screen. The new additions now provide authentication and tasks can be completed without entering a PIN code.

Provided by biometrics company Nuance, which is also working on voice authentication with ICICI Bank and created the technology behind Siri, Inge has already gained 100,000 ING Netherlands customers. In addition, two million consumers use the mobile banking app. According to the bank, on average, customers log on to the app six times a week.

As well as voice recognition, ING Netherlands added authorisation with fingerprints, also able to authorise payments, in March. This followed ING Belgium making the same move in the year before, becoming the first bank to integrate biometrics into its apps.

Speaking to EPI, Jeroen Losekoot, internet and mobile marketing manager for ING Netherlands, said: "In the next few years, smartphones will become even more important for consumers. Our response to this development will be through innovations in close cooperation with our customers.

"The use of biometric functionalities like fingerprint and voice recognition is a new way of making mobile banking easy for our customers, it makes handling you banking affairs easier. It also makes mobile banking more personal. Customers use the app while talking to it, adding a human aspect to this functional innovation in mobile banking."