By 2019, consumers will authorize 5 billion transactions biometrically. And thanks to Apple and Samsung – plus a slate of newcomers in the upcoming months – the vast majority of those biometric authorizations will be fingerprint scans.
These projections come from a new research report by Juniper. For some context, consumers this year made 130 million biometrically authenticated transactions. Biometric verification relies on a physical, bodily data to act as a password or PIN code; fingerprints are most common, though other forms aren’t hard to imagine.
Juniper notes some major security concerns with the technology. While biometric data is hard to steal, once compromised it’s compromised forever. And criminals don’t need a physical copy of your finger, either. The study cited HTC One Max’s recent security lapse, in which fingerprint data on users’ phones were easily readable and stored in plaintext.
But convenience is king in the market, so unless consumers wise up to security risks, the biometric revolution is upon us. And once the population is comfortable with fingerprint verification, what other biometric data could be our proxy signature? Eye scans? Facial recognition?
Remember, biometric verification is only one small part of the contactless payment revolution (and fingerprinting may be one small part of biometrics, eventually). Apply Pay, Google Wallet, even Chase Bank are all implementing hassle-free payment options.
So why are companies investing so heavily in contactless payment? Myopically, they claim to be optimizing for customer convenience. However, contactless payment chips away at the lag time between finding a product, coveting it, and the actual purchase. The traditional barriers to buying something – pulling out a wallet, physically parting with bills or a card – will be gone, meaning impulses gestate to impulse buys much quicker.
So, consumers, digitize your wallets carefully; even if offered for free, contactless payment may have a hefty intrinsic price tag.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle 
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