Biometric sensors are a major piece of the mCommerce puzzle, but what about the other way around? There exist a number of biometric payment options designed for retail stores that don’t require smartphone biometrics to function. When it comes to the in-person payment equation, how essential is the smartphone factor?
According to Sebastien Taveau, the chief evangelist at Synaptics, fingerprint sensor sporting smartphones are likely to have better consumer traction than point of sale pay-with-your-biometric-solutions.
In an interview published today on the National Retail Federation website, Taveau gave his ideas of what recent developments in mobile biometrics will mean for the retail world.
“I don’t think the model will be paying with a fingerprint at a cash register. That was tried, and there was some pushback from consumers,” Taveau told M.V. Greene. “The consumer point of view involving payments is they likely are going to be more comfortable having the fingerprint validated on their own smartphone or device so they can control it.”
Taveau went on to describe how on-device biometrics are more comfortable for the retailers too:
“As a retailer you don’t want to store millions of fingerprint templates on the back end of your networks.”
Mobile commerce has been a major aspect of mobile identity innovations. This past Spring, both Apple and Samsung used biometrically-enabled financial features to demonstrate how strong authentication on their flagship devices makes money matters easier on the user while ensuring security.
Mobile biometrics have also been a key factor in MasterCard’s financial inclusion initiative which aims to bring services to the 2.5 billion underserved adults worldwide without even a bank account to their name.
Recently, Mobile ID World spent an entire month focused on mCommerce. To learn more about how next generation mobility and strong authentication are changing finance a great place to get started is our mCommerce Month roundup.
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