Biometrics and wearables used for financial services increase
Goode Intelligence has published research which identifies the rapid adoption of biometrics on smartphones and wearable devices, the report says this development will deliver frictionless access to banking services. The researchers forecast that by 2020 there will have been 620m mobile banking app downloads that support biometrics, with almost 160 million wearable devices that can access them. The report covers all biometric technology including&nbsp;fingerprint, face, behavioural, iris, eye-vein, voice, palm-vein, finger-vein and heartbeat.&nbsp;
Goode: Biometrics, wearables will ease financial services access

Goode Intelligence’s latest research, Biometrics for Banking; Market and Technology Analysis, Adoption Strategies and Forecasts 2015-2020, identifies that the rapid adoption of biometrics on mobile and wearable devices will deliver frictionless authentication and identity verification services across the banking industry.

Goode Intelligence forecasts that by 2020, there will be more than 620 million mobile banking app downloads that support biometrics for customer authentication and transaction verification. Additionally almost 160 million wearable devices will be benefiting from seamless biometric authentication for accessing banking services on a variety of wearable devices including smart watches and bands.

Mobile devices can easily connect with these wearable devices via Bluetooth or NFC. The customer can then use biometrics embedded in the mobile device as an additional layer on top of that to access banking services.

“A bank customer could use a single mobile banking app or wearable to authenticate biometrically across traditional and emerging banking services; cardless ATM services, in-branch customer identification — goodbye to the paper utility bill and signature — gaining access to a Bitcoin wallet; pre-authentication when accessing telephone-based banking services and simple one-touch authentication for mobile and wearable banking services,” says Alan Goode, author of the report and founder of Goode Intelligence.

The report investigates the adoption of biometric technology across all major banking channels including; in-branch, electronic banking, telephone-based banking and contact-centers, mobile banking, wearable banking and ATM — including cash and Bitcoin. All major biometric modalities are covered including fingerprint, face, behavioral, iris, eye-vein, voice, palm-vein, finger-vein and heartbeat.

Goode offers some advice to those in the banking industry that are planning to deploy biometrics for customer authentication. “What is vital to the creation of simple and secure biometric authentication experiences in banking is the choice of biometric modality,” he explains. “These must suit the device and the context — business risk. Use of a fingerprint on a mobile device is suitable to gain access to a mobile banking app whilst server-based voice or facial recognition, backed-up with behavioral analytics, may be appropriate to move cash around – especially to new beneficiaries.”