Dermot Desmond, a hotel owner and former stockbroker, must be chuffed with himself after his Daon biometrics company landed a major contract with Atom, the new digital challenger bank due to launch in the UK some time next year.

It was announced this week that Atom, which will be based in Co Durham near Newcastle, will use face and voice recognition technology for its clients to log into its mobile application. It will be the first bank in the UK to make use of such technology as a core component of its offering.

Atom will utilise Daon’s IdentityX technology in conjunction with the features of a user’s smartphone to help capture the biometric data.

The bank’s customers will register a passcode, their face and their voice with the bank, which all sounds rather Orwellian.

When logging in, they will choose which of these methods to use to gain access to their account. With certain high-value transactions, they may be required to authenticate themselves using more than one method.

Daon’s technology is already in use in airports and at border control points globally, while it also recently won a contract for kiosks in Dublin Airport.

Meanwhile, Desmond is sure to have himself a white Christmas if he chooses to spend the festive season at his registered address. According to documents at the Companies Registration Office, Desmond lives in an apartment at Crans-Montana in Switzerland. It's a ski resort, so there should be no shortage of snow up there. Merry Christmas.