Page 62 - Pay Magazine s2014

finance & strategy
The Future of Biometrics
Fingerprints
How it works
Generally, a consumer presses
her thumb onto a scanner, which then converts the ridges and valleys on the skin into a mathe- matical code that cannot be re- constructed into an image, o ering security for the unique identi er.
seLected exampLes
Bank of America’s mobile bank- ing app for Android and iPhones; PayPal via Samsung Galaxy phones; Apple Touch ID for iPads and iPhones.
exampLe oF payments use
PayPal consumers who link their ngerprints to their accounts
and Samsung Galaxy phones
can use the biometric to shop and pay at any merchant or via any app that accepts payments through PayPal, without typing
in usernames or passwords. PayPal does not store the nger- prints; the transaction involves a secure encryption key that stems from the biometric and which enables the veri cation of a shop- per’s identity. That protects the consumer against criminals ac- cessing the information from lost or stolen phones. PayPal o ers the program in the U.S. and
26 other countries.
potentiaL depLoyments
At this year’s Mobile World Con- gress, Visa demonstrated a sys- tem that has a consumer insert an EMV chip card containing that person’s ngerprint biometric into the card reader—which,
in turn, has a scanner that reads the consumer’s ngerprinting, o ering a higher level of security. Mastercard, meanwhile, has worked with Zwipe, a Norwegian developer of payment cards with biometric sensors, to roll out payment cards with ngerprint authentication. Retailers also are getting involved: Carly Rosenberg, president of Blue y, said this year that the fashion e-retailer might add a button to its mobile app enabling consumers to checkout via ngerprints, part of the com- pany’s e ort to remove hassles from purchasing.
opportunities
As mobile commerce grows— Google says 34 percent of all
U.S. online purchases come
from smartphones—many con- sumers will veer toward the convenience of a payment and authentication method that cuts the need for cumbersome entry
of passwords and email addresses, and which o ers more security. And the willingness to use nger- prints is spreading through the Western world: A Visa survey earlier this year of 14,000 Euro- pean consumers found that 81 percent of them viewed nger- prints as being more secure
than other biometric payment methods, with iris scanning,
at 76 percent, in second place.
downsides
For many consumers, nger- prints remain rmly anchored to crime, arrests and police records —a psychological roadblock that may be hard to overcome for some shoppers.
FaciaL recognition
How it works
Faces are di erent: The distance between eyes, for instance, or the length of a nose, the shape of a cheekbone. Software can analyze those measurements to arrive at a speci c identity, or can distill those features into
a statistical representation.
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