The Boom of Biometrics: Paying with a Smile, Fingerprint, and Heartbeat

Imagine the following scenario: you no longer need to carry a wallet, you can completely forget your PINs, and you never have to perform the tedious task of entering card numbers when shopping online. All you need to do is smile, place your finger on the sensor, or look at the camera, and – done, the payment is completed. If this is the story you wish to live, feel free to start getting excited, as a true revolution is underway that is introducing biometric technology into our daily lives. Alongside already relatively well-known solutions such as fingerprint, eye, or facial scanning, new biometric technologies are emerging, allowing someone’s identity to be confirmed in the future by recognizing patterns created by veins in the hand or finger, a unique heartbeat, or even behavioral patterns such as typing rhythm, walking, or voice.

In addition to convenience and speed (just smile and the product is in the cart!), these methods guarantee security and reliability greater than traditional passwords, PINs, or security tokens. Given these advantages, it is no surprise that experts estimate a massive growth in investment in the development of biometric technology and its applications. Specifically, research from Juniper Research has shown that by 2025, biometrics will be used to confirm over three trillion transactions, which is an astonishing 650% increase from 404 billion in 2020. Google Intelligence forecasts that biometric payments globally could reach a value of $5.8 billion and over three billion users by 2026.

Innovative Solutions

The leaders in the growth of this market are smartphone manufacturers such as Apple, Google, and Samsung, e-commerce giants like Amazon, as well as leaders in the financial sector such as Mastercard. All these players offer increasingly sophisticated biometric solutions that align with consumer needs (younger generations, for instance, are at the forefront of the trend of using biometric technology), as well as the requirements of regulators such as the European Payment Services Directive known as PSD2. Furthermore, to elevate security without complicating the user experience, biometrics can be combined with other authentication methods, a good example being Mastercard’s ID Check.

This feature is automatically activated every time the bank wants to confirm that your purchase is indeed yours, including when it detects a potentially suspicious transaction (e.g., you are buying from a specific merchant for the first time or you are about to pay a larger amount than you usually do), which it will notify you about through its app. After that, you can confirm your identity, for example, with a fingerprint or facial recognition, and immediately resolve any doubts, with no need to visit a branch or make a phone call.

Mastercard can also provide an additional layer of transaction protection through the process of tokenization at the request of the merchant. Specifically, to prevent interception and theft of sensitive personal data during the transaction process, tokenization replaces the data from your card with another unique number – a token. This number is used by the bank and the merchant, but not by the hacker – even if they manage to obtain it – because it cannot be used outside of a specific transaction. These digital tokens can be created for various devices, not limited to smartphones but also usable in smartwatches or similar devices. In any case, trends indicate that the future of biometrics is guaranteed, just like your easy and secure online shopping, which truly becomes shopping with a smile.

*Content created in collaboration with Mastercard