Emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India are increasingly becoming key drivers of smartphone volumes. This results in the growth of eCommerce and mCommerce paving the way for various levels of personalized security protocols to be implemented. This trend is expected to drive various biometric technologies such as voice, face, and iris.
Globally, the financial industry is witnessing increasing interests in biometric technologies and is soon expected to replace existing passwords and PINs. One of the key drivers for the advent of biometric technologies in financial applications has been the interests in security. Urbanization has resulted in the need for enhanced safety, security, and convenience. Rising demand for smartphones is a prime example of this trend. Transactions via the mobile phones have increased in the last 2 years resulting in increased precedence for security. Several vendors are currently researching the mobile biometric space, with certain big names in the industry actually visualizing biometric technologies as the way forward.
The realm of connected devices resulting from the dawn of Internet of Things (IoT) is further emphasizing the need for security. With WiFi becoming ubiquitous, smartphones and wearables will be considered the next generation wallets enabling transactions. This trend will expand into various services such as health records shared with caregiver remotely or with wearables enabling single-sign-on (SSO) applications across industries. This trend will result in an expansive ecosystem with competition from newer stakeholders. This will increasingly pave way for new product innovations and new value chain partnerships as well.
Recent developments in the market pertaining to biometric usage in finance:
- Samsung’s latest phones incorporate fingerprint biometrics, enabling mobile payments for its users at most outlets. The use of magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology, which mimics the magnetic strip on a traditional card, enables payments without the vendor requiring any device upgrades.
- Apple has fingerprint sensor embedded in its latest phones enabling payments through ApplePay, while Google has its own version of the mobile payments space through its AndroidPay.
- MasterCard announced its partnership with Zwipe to launch a contactless card based on fingerprint sensing.
- Bionym introduced Nymi, a wearable band which employs an electro-cardiogram biometric sensor to authenticate transactions.
- Iritech introduced the Fidelys watch (with embedded iris capture capability) that employs a magnetic sensor used for contactless payments, physical access control, and single sign-on (SSO) for social networking and email.
Another emerging application of the IoT space is the wearables, which occupy the base of the IoT application hierarchy. Many start-ups and OEMs are targeting different parts of the complex ecosystem of wearables. Companies such as Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft are investing heavily in this space as this is expected to be the fastest growing market in 3 years.
The use of biometric technologies to offer logical access across different devices ultimately is to enhance customer security and experience. There have been numerous trials of banks deploying biometric modalities and existing deployment of fingerprint modality in ATM across Asia and parts of Europe as well.
Despite being in its early days, biometrics promises to deliver the required levels of security and convenience. Connected devices will thrive in all aspects of life, with mobile devices increasingly becoming the enabler across applications. Therefore, with technology advancements and the rising prominence of a connected world (IoT), the demand for biometrics is expected to be significant in the finance and banking industry.
