Is Biometrics the Future of Payment Authentication?

Even though we have a myriad of ways to transfer money online, many people are still reluctant to use them. Perhaps it's the relatively young age of online money transfer methods, the numerous frauds extensively covered by the media or the lack of education about the safe and secure banking options available today that holds them back. Those who feel that paying online is not by far as safe as actually handing over cash in real life, there are always new ways to secure transfers in the works. Among them, there are numerous that intend to use unique features of the payer - the iris, the fingerprint, and their likes - to authenticate transfers. Could biometrics be the future of online payment security? 

Where we pay online

Shopping and real money gaming are two online businesses that handle a vast number of online money transfers. Web shops usually limit the list of their available payment methods to just a handful - payment on delivery, credit and debit cards, and a handful of online wallet services (with PayPal being the most widespread). When it comes to online gaming, the range of available services is far more diverse - the methods listed on the Red Flush Canada website range from traditional wire transfers and paper checks to numerous e-wallets, as well as global and local online money transfer services like Neteller, Skrill. Some of them, like PaySafe for example, are completely anonymous, thus considered to be the safest of them all: users can purchase a PaySafe PIN code from a local retailer, introduce it to the appropriate section at the Red Flush website... and that's about it, the rest will be handled by the payment processor. Thus, Red Flush players need not give out credit card numbers, e-wallet accounts or bank accounts.

Biometrics could make all these payment methods even safer, offering peace of mind for a large number of users.

Biometrics and payments

A study conducted in 2016 by VISA has shown that two-thirds of European consumers would like to use biometrics to make their payments more secure. Most of them consider two-factor authentication methods that involve biometrics to be a secure way to make payments, and many of them think biometrics will make payments not only safer but faster as well. 

The introduction of biometrics as a payment authentication method would benefit online retailers the most. The study shows that nearly a third of the people interviewed have abandoned an online purchase because of the payment security process. Fingerprint reading is seen as the most secure form of authentication by the majority of those interviewed (81%), followed closely by iris scanning (76%). And almost half of the 14,000 participants say that they would use biometric authentication when purchasing goods online.