Biometric security technology is growing quickly as mobile payments become more popular and the ability to mitigate the risk of hackers and identity thieves stealing information becomes critical.
However, the growth of biometrics — which includes tech such as fingerprint, hand, iris and facial recognition — is accelerating perhaps much faster than many predicted as a new study from Juniper Research has found that mobile biometrics will authenticate $2 trillion worth of in-store and remote mobile payment transactions annually by 2023.
This is way up from the $124 billion expected to take place in 2018. Juniper says the growth will be due to initiatives that further secure remote payment transaction and as more open biometric platforms proliferate.
The fastest growth will come from biometrically verified remote mCommerce transactions reaching more than 48 billion in volume by 2023 — this is about 57 percent of all biometric transactions, up from about 28 percent forecast for 2018.
Juniper forecasts more than 80 percent of smartphones will have some form of biometric hardware by 2023, or about 5 billion smartphones. Traditionally, smartphones have been using fingerprint sensors but facial recognition and iris scanning will become the prominent technology over the next 5 years with adoption exceeding 1 billion devices.
One of the growth areas will be “biometrics-as-a-service” software, which employs artificial intelligence to check users’ identities on any platform.
“The possibilities for software-based continuous behavioral biometric authentication are huge,” notes research author James Moar. “The flexible programming allows businesses to deploy any level of authentication they require relatively easily, while ensuring that transactions are properly authenticated.”
