Most Filipinos trust physical biometrics for mobile or ATM financial transactions

Filipinos have relatively high comfort levels with biometric identity verification for financial transactions, with 85 percent saying they are comfortable using voice, face, or fingerprint biometrics for mobile apps and 81 percent reporting comfort with using facial or fingerprint recognition at an ATM, according to research from Unisys Corporation.

The “2019 Asia Pacific Banking Insights: Trusting in the Banking Experience” report also shows that not as many Filipinos are comfortable with using voice recognition to interact with a bank’s call center (64 percent), and only slightly more than half are comfortable with being identified by the bank through behavioral biometrics (53 percent). Those reporting a lack of comfort with biometrics most often cite data security concerns, Unisys says.

The Philippines was one of five countries surveyed for the report, along with Australia, Honk Kong, New Zealand, and Taiwan, and Filipinos reported the highest proportion of individuals who say the security and safety of customer data is the most important consideration when choosing a bank, at 63 percent. The next most commonly cited consideration is efficient service and issue resolution, at 54 percent. Filipinos are also more likely to trust banks with their personal data (42 percent) than the government (21 percent) or card networks (15 percent).

“Filipinos have a strong appetite to use new technologies such as biometrics to help secure who can access their financial information,” comments Unisys Asia Pacific Industry Director for Financial Services Ian Selbie. “The lower level of support for behavioral biometrics is likely driven by a combination of less familiarity with this type of security measure and an unwillingness to be monitored on an ongoing basis. If banks want their customers to embrace behavioral based identity authentication they will need to convince them that the benefit of security is worth forgoing some level of privacy.”

The Philippines’ government approved a biometric-based national ID scheme last year, with the goal of full enrollment by 2022, while Finda was selected to provide facial recognition for cross-border financial transactions with MyEG Philippines in January.

Article Topics

APAC  |  ATMs  |  banking  |  biometrics  |  identity verification  |  Philippines  |  secure transactions  |  Unisys