Fueling Innovation Beyond Security - Biometrics in Payments

Biometrics have been brought into the spotlight as a more secure, convenient, and non-sharable alternative to passwords. While all related modalities have had their ups and downs over the last decade (with face and fingerprints more so than others), the technology has now reached a critical point where end users actually expect consumer electronics (CE) to have at least some sort of biometric authentication enabled. Having CE secured and penetration rates increasing with every single quarter have resulted in payment applications being hailed as the holy grail for biometrics, perhaps rightly so.

Fueled by the exponential increase of mobile payments and the amount of digital-only transactions worldwide (particularly in APAC), related modalities are steadily finding their way into the very core of payments. Biometrics is not just an additional security layer or a more “personalized” authentication solution. It has effectively been transformed into an “enabling technology” and one that not only acts as a highly potent agent that will empower the gears of …