BRIEF: The Mobile Iris Scanning Trend Takes Shape

With its chief rival widely recognized as the key pioneer behind mobile fingerprint scanning, Samsung sought to assert itself with a different modality when it announced the Galaxy Note7 smartphone last year. It was to become the first globally available, mass market smartphone to feature iris recognition for user authentication, and to kick off a new revolution in mobile biometrics, until disaster struck and the Note7 saw a total recall due to a fire hazard.

Samsung didn’t give up, however, and firmly delivered mobile iris recognition to the mass market at the start of this year with its acclaimed Galaxy S8 and S8+ devices. Still, whether iris scanning would go mainstream the way fingerprint scanning did remained an open question, with those devices being virtually alone on this new frontier.

Several months later, it’s increasingly clear that a larger trend is taking shape. Here are some of the signs:

A financial services giant was among the first to embrace Samsung’s iris scanning technology…

Mastercard Focuses on Identity Check Opportunity with Galaxy S8 Iris Authentication

… And now banks are starting to support iris scanning for mobile login:

TSB Bank to Offer Iris-Based Mobile Login for Samsung Galaxy S8 Users

Bank of America to Trial Iris Login for Mobile Customers

One of the biggest component makers for Android has built support for iris recognition into a major new camera module:

New Qualcomm Camera Modules Support Iris Authentication, Depth Sensing

The biggest biometric ID program in the world supports iris scanning:

Is Mobile Iris Biometrics The Future of Aadhaar?

And with its latest flagship device, Samsung itself has demonstrated its commitment to promoting iris-based authentication:

Samsung Aims to Enable IoT ‘Payment Ecosystem’ with Iris Biometrics

Samsung Continues to Champion Iris Scanning with Note8 Device