Biometrics

Payment and banking apps are deploying passwordless experiences for convenience and some degree of improved security ahead of a goal to eliminate passwords from the authentication process altogether. We should not, however, conflate passwordless experiences with system architecture where there is no password in use, writes George Avetisov, CEO of HYPR.

Visa showcased payment technologies it’s developing for future Olympic games, including in-home “couch commerce” leveraging augmented reality.

The potential for voice payments is massive and drawing significant attention from developers. But limited use suggests it's not ready for prime time.

Sourcemedia's annual PayThink conference is always productive and informative, and this year's event was no exception.

Visa, Mountain America Credit Union and Fingerprints AB were thrilled with their biometric card test, but also faced the grim realization that real world infrastructure may not be as accommodating.

The Face Login will enable users of the Paytm payment platform to log into the app simply by looking into their phones, a move designed to add a biometric layer to prevent phishing attacks.

Digital ID platform developers are competing to sign up partners to deploy their technologies to replace vulnerable usernames and passwords with a single sign-in. The challenge is to sign up a sufficient volume of partners to make these platforms attractive for consumers and businesses.

The advent of Faster Payments services plus Europe’s PSD2 have heightened concerns among banks about increased fraud risks. This has created opportunities for firms such as New York/Israel’s BioCatch and San Francisco’s BehavioSec, both of which develop technology around behavioral biometrics analysis.

Despite recent scrutiny of mobile point of sale devices, the mobile payments category as a whole has generally carried a promise of initiating a safer transaction through the use of biometrics, device ID, geolocation and other factors.

To date, payments companies have feared common biometric methods such as fingerprint or iris scanning are unreliable and susceptible to hacking. However, there’s growing evidence that finger vein ID could prove more palatable.