Are People Ready for Biometric Based Payment Systems? Visa Survey Says Mostly Yes.

Biometrics, as a security system, is a technology whose time has come. The ability to connect a user to an account just by measuring certain parts of a user’s anatomy makes a lot of sense, and some are even starting to wonder if it can be applied in other ways. A recent study from Visa suggests at least one big new way to use biometrics, and it’s a measure a lot of users agree with.

The Visa study says that just over two out of three users—68 percent—are interested in seeing biometrics connected to mobile payment systems. That wasn’t the only unusual development out of the survey, however, as it was also found that 73 percent believed that two factor authentication was a secure way to manage customer identity, particularly for things like mobile payment systems. In this case, two factor authentication not only reflects something a user has—like a card or a smartphone—but also something a user is, like biometric data, or knows, like a personal identification number (PIN) or password.

Moreover, biometrics have a great advantage when it comes to speed—like at bars or restaurants, or paying for train tickets—but have one key disadvantage in the form of false positives. A reader that doesn’t catch a fingerprint just right, for example, can be a big problem in biometric security. PINs and passwords, meanwhile, are less secure—they can be guessed or otherwise brute forced around—but accurate. Users generally prefer fingerprint verification by a simple majority at 53 percent of respondents.

Indeed, biometrics aren’t a magic bullet solution. It wasn’t so long ago that a facial recognition system was famously spoofed by the simple expedient of a photograph. While technology has come a long way in a short time, it’s still the kind of thing that’s more “under development” than it is “under control.” Still, planning for such circumstances now could pay off in grand style later; besides, we’re talking about a security system that depends on items always in hand, that can never be forgotten, or taken away from the user without grievous bodily harm.

Biometrics likely will be a big part of the security picture in the near future, but in the short term, these systems will need a bit more refinement first.