Lux Research ranks biometric options for mobile payments

Lux Research says current mobile payment systems will need to add biometrics in order to hasten adoption.

June 10, 2016

2 min read

Results of a biometric study on point-of-sale payment options indicate that biometric technologies are needed to advance the market.

Market analysis firm Lux Research (Boston, MA) says that current mobile payment systems will need to add biometrics in order to hasten adoption and meet expectations of astronomical growth rates. It also finds that a mixture of biometric technologies—incorporating the best security features, ease of use, and cost—running on smartphones offers the best opportunity of clocking growth rates of more than 200% in 2016.

FIGURE 1. Vintage mug shot of Al Capone (U.S. Dept. of Justice; Wikimedia) with face key points. Face recognition relies on identifying the key points, such as the corners of the eyes and mouth, the tips of the nose and mouth, and points on the chin and eyebrows. Some identification points are widely used; others are used only in certain algorithms. With 3D sensors, faces can be mapped similarly in these dimensions.

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"Companies developing biometric authentication products need to build partnerships or innovate and consider multimodal biometric platforms to stay in the game," said Tiffany Huang, Lux Research associate and lead author of the report entitled, "Securing Mobile Payments with Biometric Authentication." "It is hard to see one biometric usage winning in the medium- to far-term," she added.

Lux Research analysts evaluated key biometric technologies and rated them on metrics such as cost, usability and security, assessing how they affect each player in the mobile payment ecosystem. Among their findings:

(1) Palm vein is most secure but cost is a barrier. Palm vein sensors would be optimal for mobile purchases at a physical point of sale but are prohibitively expensive. Fingerprint and behavioral sensors—that assess such things as a handshake or typing movement patterns—drew higher ratings, but adoption is low on account of the low maturity of behavioral developers.

(2) Iris scan is ideal for online purchases. Iris scan is ideal for wireless application protocol (WAP)—where users buy products on a website or app—as it takes less than a second. However, high cost limits adoption, and the required sensors are not found on the majority of mobile devices. A combination of facial and behavioral sensors comes in second in ease of use.

(3) Cost, user ease drive SMS.In short messaging service (SMS)-based payments, user ease is the driving force, but security takes a back seat. As in WAP, iris scan is the ideal solution for SMS but high usability from other devices can be a threat. Multimodal biometrics, integrating technologies like facial, voice and behavioral scans, can be competitive as well.

SOURCE: Lux Research; http://www.luxresearchinc.com/news-and-events/press-releases/read/mobile-payments-need-biometrics-improve-user-experience-and

About the Author

Gail Overton

Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.