Authentication.

• Position: Technology Tools

Visa International and Vocent Solutions Inc., a provider of voice-print authentication solutions, have announced a two-year global strategic alliance. This alliance will facilitate new product development opportunities for Visa, utilizing Vocent's biometric voiceprint authentication to ensure secure payment transactions.

As part of the alliance, Visa and Vocent will explore opportunities to use Vocent's voiceprint authentication solutions to benefit Visa's member financial institutions, merchants and cardholders and to explore ways to bring Vocent technology, products and systems to an international audience.

As a first step in this strategic alliance, Vocent will deploy a voiceprint authentication solution to automate IT help desk services for Visa employees. By automating password reset using speech recognition and speaker...