Colombia. The implementation of biometrics in financial and commercial entities is the purpose of the Colombian National Registry of Civil Status, after several measures that have been applied since February to comply with the Anti-Procedure Law.
"The biometric consultation that has been so successful in the elections will be used to identify citizens during financial and commercial transactions, just as we have security of who the voter is through fingerprint information, a bank or a commercial establishment will have full security of who is the person who makes the transaction. This is our purpose," said the National Registrar, Carlos Ariel Sánchez Torres.
Regarding the verification of the fingerprint, Decree 019 of January 2012, stipulates in its Article 18, that "In the procedures and actions that are fulfilled before public entities and individuals who exercise administrative functions in which the obtaining of the fingerprint is required as a means of immediate identification of the person, this shall be done by electronic means."
The National Registry of Civil Status, through the National Identification Archive, ANI, and the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, Afis, is the Entity in charge of delivering to public and private entities that require it, the information of more than 40 million Colombians over 18 years of age alive and dead, by means of the capture and comparison of the fingerprint.
To this end, "the aforementioned entities and individuals will have the technological means of interoperability necessary to compare the identity of the owner of the footprint with the database of the National Registry of Civil Status", as stipulated in the Anti-Procedure Law.
Among the measures adopted by the Entity are the elimination of the password certificate, the free issuance of the certificate of validity of the card online, the web application for notaries and entities in charge of the civil registry to report in real time the civil death registries and the technological platform to certify the survival of a person through the Ministry of Social Protection.
