Deploying the human body as a recognition tool is the next wave that may soon make passwords redundant. According to a global report released by JWT on the future of payments, there will be 471 million global biometrics smartphone users by 2017. That’s a huge potential market.
Here are five ways in which biometric solutions are making passwords redundant across the globe.
Fingerprints
Made popular by Apple Pay where Touch ID by Apple works on fingerprint recognition.
MasterCard along with biometrics company Zwipe have collaborated on world’s first fingerprint authenticated payment card for contactless payments.
Barclays has teamed up with tech giant Hitachi to offer ‘finger vein technology’ to its corporate customers. Finger Vein technology incidentally is reported to be highly secure due to the uniqueness of individual vein patterns, which are established in the womb and remain largely unchanged throughout one’s life.
- Voice
Authenticates a user based on numerous vocal characteristics like vocal tract geometry, harmonics, pitch and range.
First Direct and HSBC customers in the UK can enrol their ‘voice print’ to log in to their online accounts. Closer home, ICICI Bank is also known to have launched the service.
Citibank’s voice biometrics authentication project launched in the UK, automatically identifies a customer while he or she explains an issue to a customer service representative over the phone.
- Retina
Developed in the 1980s. This method is based on the blood vessels at the back of the eye that have a unique pattern for every individual.
Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo and handset maker Fujitsu have launched a smartphone that authenticates users for mobile payments by scanning their irises.
- Heartbeat
Heartbeat or ECG scanning is more complex and hence not as popular yet but could get there going forward.
Toronto-based Bionym did a pilot with MasterCard and Royal Bank of Canada, that uses a Nymi wristband linked to a MasterCard credit card for payments: an NFC chip inside the wristband communicates wirelessly with payment terminals, while the ECG sensor authenticates the user.
- Facial biometrics
Face recognition technology measures and matches unique characteristics for the purposes of identification or authentication.
Uniqul, a Finnish company, developed a system which uses facial recognition for payments.
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