Goode Intelligence forecasts 2.6 billion to use biometrics for payments by 2023

By 2023, nearly 579 million biometric payment cards will be used globally to enable frictionless customer authentication for higher-value contactless transactions, according to new research from Goode Intelligence.

The report, Biometrics for Payments; Market and Technology Analysis, Adoption Strategies and Forecasts 2018-2023 – Second Edition, includes the prediction that there will be 2.6 billion people using biometric payments by 2023, driven by demand for frictionless authentication in all channels, the need to reduce payment fraud, regulation at both the state and industry level, and technology standardization.

“With biometrics taking a prominent role in Money 20/20 in Las Vegas this timely research identifies that across all payment channels, old or new; from ATMs, smartphones, biometric payment cards, connected cars, smart home devices and the latest wearable devices that support ECG, biometrics is becoming the only solution to improve customer experience and to reduce payment fraud,” comments Good Intelligence Founder and CEO Alan Goode, who authored the report.

“In addition, pilots of ‘Naked Biometric Payments’ are underway where a consumer does not have to use a payment token; a card, a wearable or a smartphone,” Goode says. “After enrolling their biometric data in the payment scheme, the consumer simply authorizes payments by presenting their enrolled biometric. Examples include Alipay’s trial of a facial recognition payment solution in selected KFC stores and FingoPay rolling out their finger-vein technology to business school cafeterias in Sweden and small grocery retailers in the UK. These types of solutions can be also used for identity verification in physical locations to support age verification without the need to carry around a driver’s licence or a passport. The changing face of retail stores that automates checkout and payment will increasingly rely on biometric technology to enable fast frictionless automated payments.”

Contactless card payments are growing in regions where they are supported, and they are outperforming mobile payments in some regions, according to Goode Intelligence. The improved security of biometric payment cards could allow the reduced friction of contactless payments to be used for higher-value transactions. The same benefit could also be applied to wearables such as Apple Watch, which Goode Intelligence predicts will add ECG-based biometric authentication for payments in 2019, which other wearable OEMs following suit later in 2019 and 2020.

The extensive report also includes analysis of biometric payment adoption, the drivers and barriers in the current market, reviews of key biometric technologies and interviews with stakeholders.

A recent report from ABI Research predicts shipments of smart cards for payments in Asia alone to reach 1.8 billion cards by 2022.

Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  Goode Intelligence  |  market report  |  secure transactions