UBS analysts believe that biometric payment cards can capture up to 15 percent of the payments market and generate $5 billion in bank revenues by 2026. The main factors influencing market changes are reduced costs of servicing and producing payment cards, the development of the contactless economy, and the increase in the number of successful, commercial pilot programs in the field of biometrics.

Confirming biometric transactions is already a practical solution that can be used, not just a technological curiosity. The largest technology companies have long been testing such payment methods, such as Visa, which has been researching this area since 2018. In the United Arab Emirates in February 2021 facial recognition already gets approved as a method of identity verification and payments in the private services sector. The French bank BNP Paribas in January this year began offering the Visa Premier card, giving the possibility of switching to authorization by fingerprint. Many other banks, incl. SocGen and NatWest are also testing this technology.

The use of this verification method is being introduced in many sectors, not only in payments. Evernym, Yoti, and iProov are working on securing vaccine passes, biometric access control devices have been introduced, among others, in TrustSec where a Cisco solution minimizes threats to internal networks of companies, and biometric products offered, for example, by Suprema, have achieved the highest sales records in the history of companies.

In Poland, the banking sector has initiated the implementation of selected processes using biometrics. Interestingly, the first institutions that decided to test biometrics were cooperative banks (Podkarpacki Bank Spółdzielczy and Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości). In 2010, PBS was the first bank in Europe to implement finger vascular biometrics in its ATMs in order to improve the payment of social benefits.

(WBJ)