Visa study shows Brits trust banks over governments to protect biometrics

Visa Europe published new research that shows that Britons are placing their trust in banks over government agencies to protect their biometric data.

According to the study, UK consumers are nearly twice as likely to trust banks to store and retain their biometric data safe (60%), than they are to trust government agencies (33%).

In regards to who they would trust to offer biometrics authentication as a service to confirm identity, 85% of consumers chose banks, 81% selected payment networks, 70% said global online brand, and 64% chose smartphone companies.

This is a significant increase over Visa’s 2014 survey results when 65% of UK consumers said they would trust banks to offer biometrics authentication as a service to confirm identity.

Additionally, 64% of consumers said they want to use biometrics as a method of payment authentication and familiarity is increasing the comfort level of British consumers.

The growth in fingerprint authentication for mobile payments has led more people to trust the biometric method, with 80% of survey respondents stating that they were the most comfortable with fingerprint recognition.

A further 88% of respondents said they viewed fingerprint authentication as the most secure form of payment, followed by iris-scanning (83%) and facial recognition (65%).

“Banks have a tremendous opportunity in this payment revolution. From trialling voice recognition to behavioural biometrics for authentication, we’re already seeing banks – both high street and challenger banks, alike – making positive steps to adopt this technology in a variety of use cases,” said Kevin Jenkins, UK and Ireland managing director at Visa. “This consumer confidence in both authentication as well as the storage of their biometric data gives banks the perfect win-win scenario, enabling them to provide a service that the public wants which will also benefit the banks, themselves.

“Visa is already supporting a number of institutions in the development of emerging forms of authentication. We will continue our role as an enabler of payments and will remain tech agnostic when working with banking partners to ensure that new and emerging forms of payment authentication take place securely, conveniently and discreetly.”

Previously reported, Visa Europe released the results of its Populus-commissioned study that finds that European consumers are interested in using biometrics for payments, particularly when they are integrated with other security measures.

Article Topics

banking  |  biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  data storage  |  identity verification  |  Visa