BY ROSEMARY IWUALA
Biometrically authenticated remote mobile payment, an innovation that utilises biometric identification to authorise financial transactions, is projected to reach $1.2 trillion globally by 2027 growing by a high 365 percent from $332 billion this year, according to a new research report by Juniper Research.
The report titled, “Mobile Payment Biometric: Key Opportunities, Regional Analysis & Market Forecasts 2022-2027”, identified OEM (original equipment manufacturer) pay solutions, including Apple Pay, as a driver of mobile payment biometrics adoption, noting that these transactions utilise biometrics, typically facial and fingerprint recognition, to authenticate remote mobile payments and promote its adoption.
The digital technology market research organisation further asserted that facial recognition is paving the way for greater adoption of biometrics in mobile payments, with OEM-Pay solutions leveraging the near ubiquity of facial recognition capabilities to provide frictionless checkout experiences for customers.
These features, according to Juniper, have spurred financial institutions and other large enterprises to expand implementation of biometric authentication, leading to a significant surge in the exploitation of biometric verification for payments in recent months.
Juniper also found that regulatory changes pushed forward by Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) requirements, has pushed financial institutions to implement biometric authentication, thereby accelerating the technology’s adoption.
On the flipside, the report warned that the technology has become a target for malicious actors using advanced spoofing techniques, such as digital injection attacks.
To this end, Juniper advised mobile authentication vendors to prioritise the design and implementation of enhanced liveness detection, and anti-spoofing techniques, to combat the ever-evolving role of fraudulent players and ensure that security is not compromised.
OEM-Pay vendors were also advised to leverage smartphone design to enhance built-in biometric systems within devices and ensure that security is maintained as new threats emerge.
The report also disclosed that financial institutions are beefing up security by implementing step-up authentication, where certain transactions are escalated for biometric approval based on risk scoring, to maintain trust and reduce fraud. This, it said, offers vendors multiple ways to authenticate, as well as develop new techniques to keep biometrics secure.
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