Report: 90 Percent of Consumers Believe Biometric Security is More Effective Than Passwords

Mastercard and researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Computer Science have teamed up to help financial services executives deliver biometric security to their customers.

The effort is based on research pointing to an important obstacle: While consumers appear ready to embrace biometric security, bank executives are somewhat at a loss as to how to deploy it effectively. According to the research report, Mobile Biometrics in Financial Services: A Five Factor Framework, over 90 percent of consumers surveyed indicated that they believe biometric security is more effective than password-based security, and that they’re willing to try it. At the same time, among bank administrators in a position to implement the technology, only 36 percent said they have had adequate experience with the technology to do so.

To overcome this challenge, the report lays out five key areas for bank executives to consider – Performance, Usability, Interoperability, Security, and Privacy – in order to get a handle on the technology. And while the report delves into biometric security in considerable detail, in a statement announcing its availability, Opus Research Intelligent Authentication Program Director Ravin Sanjith said, “We expect the Five Factor Framework to become an indispensable aide for industry professionals and decision makers to have better informed, strategic discussions that drive towards more efficient and successful high-scale implementations.”

Of course, the consumer side of this issue may still pose its own obstacles, given an HSBC-commissioned report’s recent findings that ‘technophobia’ among consumers is a key obstacle to the adoption of biometric security in banking. But with security-conscious advocates seeking to familiarize both bank administrators and end users with the benefits of biometric security, it seems that significant progress could be made in short order.