Verifone goes all in on biometric authentication—whether consumers want it or not

The news: Verifone rolled out a new suite of point-of-sale (POS) devices that include biometric authentication capabilities and biometric modules that can be added to older Verifone devices, per a press release.

The solutions will let customers use face and palm authentication to do things like check into appointments, link loyalty accounts, and verify payment methods to protect against fraud.

Do consumers want this? Most consumers aren’t interested in using biometric payments.

• Only 15.6% of US consumers are comfortable using face recognition to make a purchase, per our July 2024 US Cash-Back Credit Card Emerging Features survey.
• And only 12.5% would be comfortable using palm recognition.
• Consumers were most comfortable with fingerprint recognition, at 24.4%.

But consumers’ general unreadiness for biometric payments may be misguided given the fact that the many consumers already use it for Apple ID and Apple Pay or Android’s facial recognition feature. Therefore, there may be a lack of consumer education about what biometric payments entails.

Our take: Verifone’s biometric solutions may face reluctance from customers and thus struggle to secure adoption among merchants.

Amazon’s struggle to get Amazon One off the ground is an example of this. It’s likely in part because the trust consumers have in Apple and other phone-makers to keep their information secure and on-device does not exist for other payment providers storing their information in the cloud.

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