Is Biometric Identification Ready For Payment Technologies?

By Shalu Tomar, Product Developer, Vembu Technologies

Reading the term “biometric” takes us towards the biological connection between the subject and the term. It is named biometric, because it uses metrics related to human characteristics. Biometric identifiers are mainly categorized into two categories, physiological and behavioral characteristics. Physiological characteristics may include fingerprints, palms, veins, face recognition, DNA, iris recognition, or anything used for identifying a person physically. Behavioral characteristics can involve characteristics related to the pattern of behavior of a person, like typing rhythm, voice, etc.

Now, how do you connect the dots between the term “biometric” and “payment”? The basic relation would be to provide security and authentication to various payment methods using biometrics.

Biometrics is not a new technology: Biometrics initially originated in 1858 when Sir William Herschel used handprints to identify Civil Service of India employees from others who might claim to be employees on payday. Its usage has been restricted to the government sector, such as electronic ID and passports. But, it has been used in banking and other payment methods. Many banks around the world have already implemented biometrics for customer authentication, mostly in the form of fingerprint reading. Countries such as Brazil, India, Poland, and Japan, support ATM cash withdrawals by means of biometrics — and many are yet to be established. Using powerful biometrics systems, banks have managed to reduce losses due to identity theft. To ensure that no applicant is registered twice, banks use automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS), which were implemented by the FBI for criminal cases.

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