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Majority of Brits back biometric ID

The iPhone 5s seems to have pushed along a major shift in consumer attitudes toward biometrics. One study finds that almost 80 percent of Brits are ready to ditch PINs in favor of fingerprint ID.

August 1, 2014

IPhone 5s sales of more than 10 million have helped contribute to a major shift in consumer attitudes toward biometrics, according to research from U.K.-based digital financial services provider Intelligent Environments. Today 8 in 10 (79 percent) Brits are ready to ditch PINs in favor of biometric security measures, the company says. 

Fingerprint technology was voted as the most popular biometric method according to the firm's newly released Future Password Index. More than half (53 percent) of U.K. banking customers want their banks to integrate fingerprint scanners into their digital banking services.

The least popular method was found to be voice recognition, popular with just over a quarter (27 percent) of customers, in spite of Barclays recent announcement it will be introducing the technology into its telephone banking service over the next year.

The Future Password Index was derived from an online survey of 2,000 U.K. consumers commissioned by IE following the company’s findings that more than half (51 percent) of U.K. banking customers expect their bank to introduce more innovative security measures.

"In the battle of the biometrics, it’s not surprising that fingerprint scanners come out on top as more people are getting used to them being built into mobile devices," Intelligent Environments chief technology officer Clayton Locke said in a news release. "But what the Future Password Index really reveals is the consumer demand for these technologies."