Visa Study Finds Consumers Ready for Biometrics

A new study from ETA member Visa released last week has found most consumers are interested and ready for biometric authentication technologies — like fingerprint scanners, faceprint scanners and voice recognition technology — to take a bigger role in their digital lives.
According to the survey of 1,000 American consumers, 86 percent of Americans are interested in biometric technologies for ID verification or payments authorization, and 65 percent are already familiar with the types of biometrics commonly deployed by payments and technology companies.

Further, 70 percent of consumers think that biometrics will make life easier and 61 percent said they consider biometrics to be faster – after all, technologies like fingerprint scanners can seamlessly replace the need to remember myriad passwords and PINs. In fact, half of respondents said the top benefit of biometric technologies was eliminating the need to remember passwords and PINs. The study found that fewer than a third of consumers have unique passwords for each of their accounts.

Collectively, 65 percent said they had used biometrics, with 35 percent indicating they use them regularly.

“For financial institutions, the time has never been better to integrate biometric technology into banking apps and payments experiences for customers,” said Mark Nelsen, senior vice president of risk and authentication products, Visa, in a press release. “Advances in mobile device features are increasing the accuracy and speed of biometrics, such that they can be used for financial transactions. At the same time, consumers are widely familiar and comfortable with using biometrics for more than just unlocking their phones.”

Financial institutions were among the most trusted entities with biometric data – 65 percent and 54 percent said they trusted banks and credit card networks/providers respectively. As for the biometric technologies themselves, unsurprisingly the respondents were most familiar with fingerprint scanning technology, but eye scanners, facial recognition and voice recognition scored highly as well.

Click here to read the full study.