While one bank in China tests the waters of biometric authentication at the ATM, an entire nation in Africa is taking the plunge. On Feb. 14, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) rolled out the first phase of its $50 million plan to migrate to fingerprint ID across all of the country’s ATMs and POS devices.

At a launch ceremony in Lagos, CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said fingerprint ID will enable customers of all Nigerian banks to initiate cardless transactions at the POS or ATM.

"Thanks to the latest biometric technology, this will give Nigeria one of the most convenient and secure financial systems in the world," Sanusi said.

Dermalog Identification Systems of Hamburg, Germany, has been chosen as vendor for the project. The company won an international tender for the project in autumn of 2013.

"Fraud is one of the biggest challenges in the Nigerian banking sector," said Günther Mull, CEO of Dermalog. "Thanks to secure and convenient fingerprint identification, in future it will no longer be possible to fake and misuse identities. This will solve one of the most pressing problems for the Central Bank of Nigeria."

The system also will make life easier for bank customers, who will no longer have to remember PINs or passwords but will simply place their finger on the reader to authenticate their identity, the bank said.