Balancing the need for increased levels of identity verification within retail transactions while minimizing the impact to consumers has proven to be a narrow path with ongoing course corrections being made has characterized much of the focus of payment professionals in 2016. While the U.S. is in the process of implementing EMV standards and educating consumers to the process and benefits, European consumers are progressing into the use of biometric based identifiers.
Further, the expansion of the prevalence of fingerprint scanning to unlock personal mobile devices, and the contextual verification implicit in their use, as well as use of the microphone (voice recognition) the self-facing camera (facial recognition) found in most smartphones provides familiarity and access to a wider range of authentication methods across the transaction spectrum. Mobile payments will be the precursor for wider standard adoption, with refinements made in specific use cases. In the U.S., ensuring the sanctity of biometric marker information will be necessary for wider acceptance. Mercator Advisory Group will be reporting on the use of biometrics in the U.S. in its forthcoming CMSS reports.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Senior Analysts, Emerging Technologies at Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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