Samsung’s Galaxy S8 Could Tie Facial Recognition, Mobile Payments Together

It was perhaps one of the greatest trade show debacles around, as back in 2011, Android introduced its facial recognition system as part of the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. All was going reasonably well, until one blogger discovered that the facial recognition system could be beaten with a picture of the person whose face should be recognized.

Fast forward six years, and we’ve all come a long way since then. The Galaxy S8, meanwhile, has advanced to the point where its facial recognition system is good enough to serve as security for in included mobile payments system, according to recent reports.

Basically, within just a few months of the Galaxy S8’s release, it will offer a new facial recognition system that serves as the basis of a mobile payments system. It won’t be facial recognition alone, however, as the reports note it will combine facial recognition with fingerprint and iris detection as well to verify a user using a payment service.

What’s more, the reports note that Samsung is actively engaged in getting the feature put into play, working with banks to have the feature added to several different platforms. Clearly, this is a sign that Samsung thinks quite a bit of its facial recognition technology, enough to actively stump for it with some major banks.

It’s clear that facial recognition technology could easily have come a long way in six years; most all technologies have since then.

The fact that it’s not just facial recognition involved here but rather an entire basket of recognition technologies in concert should go a long way toward making this palatable not only to banks but also to their customers.

If Samsung’s new device can establish itself as the safe mobile payments option, it might well get a lot of users who weren’t planning to upgrade, but now have a reason to do so.

It’s a great idea, upgrading the security like that, and it’s possible Samsung could parlay this move into a major push as the new king of mobile security. It will be interesting to see if it does actually go that way.