Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), today announced the results from a survey of 500 consumers in the UAE that explores awareness and perceptions of biometric authentication, which finds consumers have a strong interest in biometric technologies that make their lives easier.
New forms of authentication, such as fingerprint, facial, and voice recognition, can make unlocking accounts and payments much easier and more convenient than traditional passwords or PINs - which are difficult to type onto tiny keyboards, easy to forget and can be stolen.
Neil Fernandes, Head of Risk, Middle East and North Africa, Visa said: “For the payments industry, now is the time to integrate biometric technology into banking apps and customer payments experiences, particularly given more than three quarters of consumers cited they would likely switch away from companies that do not. Identity and authentication is the key to securing digital payments and the industry is gradually moving beyond what you have and what you know to who, what and where you are.
“There is an opportunity for the UAE payments industry to deliver biometric authentication that benefits consumers, issuers, acquirers and merchants while offering the right balance of convenience and security. Visa is well positioned to facilitate this by working with payment partners to deliver a frictionless and secure payments experience.”
To help financial institutions and merchants more quickly adopt emerging biometric authentication solutions, the Visa ID Intelligence platform provides a curated selection of leading third-party authentication technologies. Visa clients can create, test and adopt new authentication solutions with simple integrations using Visa APIs and SDKs.
Authentication Survey Findings
According to the survey commissioned by Visa and conducted by AYTM Market Research, 98 percent of consumers would like to use at least one method of biometrics to make future payments, with 69 percent interested in paying using fingerprint recognition and 56 percent keen to pay using eye scanning technology. More than three quarters (77 percent) of consumers perceive biometrics to be faster than passwords and 79 percent perceive them as easier.
Other survey highlights include:
• High awareness of biometric technology among consumers with over half (51 percent) being “very familiar” and 38 percent being “somewhat familiar”
• 82 percent of consumers would likely switch away from a credit or debit card provider that does not offer biometric authentication in the future, whilst 79 percent would switch banks and 77 percent would change mobile phone provider
• The top benefit of using biometric authentication cited by respondents is stronger security compared to passwords and PINs (45 percent). Conversely, one of the top concerns of using biometric authentication for payments is also security and the loss of sensitive information (e.g. fingerprint) that cannot be changed (48 percent).