News

American consumers getting behind bio ID idea

December 15, 2017

A new Visa survey of 1,000 Americans confirms that consumers continue to have a strong interest in new biometric technologies that make their lives easier and more secure, a press release from the company said.

"For financial institutions, the time has never been better to integrate biometric technology into banking apps and payments experiences for customers," Mark Nelsen, senior vice president of risk and authentication products at Visa, said in the 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."

According to the Visa study, 6 percent of consumers are interested in using biometrics to verify identity or to make payments, and more than 65 percent of consumers are already familiar with biometrics. 

Of consumers surveyed, 70 percent of consumers that biometrics are easier and 46 percent think they are more secure than using passwords or PINs.

Here are additional highlights from the survey:

• Consumers were most familiar with fingerprint recognition — 30 percent had used it once or twice and another 35 percent use it regularly. By comparison, about 32 percent have used voice recognition and only nine percent use it regularly.
• Seventy percent of respondents find biometrics easier than passwords and 61 percent consider it faster. Fewer than one-third of consumers use unique passwords for each of their accounts.
• Fifty percent of consumers responded that the top benefit of using biometrics is eliminating the need to remember multiple passwords or PINs, followed by 46 percent who said that biometrics is more secure than passwords or PINs for verifying identity.
• Forty-nine percent are concerned both about the risk of a security breach of biometric information and the possibility that biometric authentication won't work well or will take multiple tries.

Research was conducted by AYTM Market Research, Sept. 12–19, among 1,000 U.S. adult consumers who use at least one credit card, debit card, or mobile pay. Get more informationabout the survey.