Indian consumers favour biometrics over passwords: Visa

Indian consumers are keen to use biometrics like fingerprint, facial and voice recognition for authentication, over traditional passwords or PINs, a report by digital payments major Visa today said.
These technologies are seen as more convenient options over conventional methods like passwords or PINs "which are difficult to type onto tiny keyboards, easy to forget, and can be stolen", the report said.
"The payments ecosystem is witnessing a rapid change in adoption of new form factors of payments and modes of authentication," Visa India and South Asia Group Country Manager TR Ramachandran said.
For financial institutions, the time has never been better to integrate biometric technology into banking apps and payments experiences for customers, he added.

He explained that smartphones today have advanced features increasing the accuracy and speed of biometrics, such that they can be used for financial transactions.
"Indian consumers too have discovered the ease of biometric authentication and are open to using this technology for transactions going forward, which augurs well for the Indian payments industry," he stated.

According to the study, 99 per cent of the respondents said they are personally interested in using at least one biometric method to verify their identity, and an equal number of participants said they are interested in using at least one biometric method to make payments.

The top benefits associated with using biometric authentication for payments are the perception that it is more secure than passwords/PINs (48 per cent) and that it gives consumers peace of mind that their payment is protected (46 per cent).
Also, many perceived that biometrics are faster (81 per cent) and easier (84 per cent) than passwords.
Interestingly, 51 per cent said they are concerned about the risk of a security breach of sensitive biometric information.