Smile to pay: the looming boom in facial recognition

Man unlocking smartphone with facial scanner on black background. Biometric verification

Facial recognition for payments authentication is expected to boom in the next four years, achieving 120 per cent growth, according to Juniper Research.

The research predicts that by 2025, the number of people using facial recognition to secure payments will exceed 1.4 billion, more than double the number of users last year.

Juniper said the growth in face-recognition authentication has been fuelled and accelerated by the implementation of FaceID by Apple. 

Meanwhile, fingerprint sensors will dominate the sector, featuring on 93 per cent of biometrically equipped smartphones in 2025 compared to 17 per cent in hardware-based facial recognition. 

“Hardware-based facial recognition is growing, but the ability to carry out facial recognition via software is limiting its adoption rate,” said Susan Morrow, co-author of the research. “As the need for a secure mobile authentication environment grows, smartphone vendors will need to increasingly turn to more robust hardware-based systems to keep pace with fraudsters’ evolving tactics.”

In addition, the use of voice recognition for payment will also increase from 111 million users last year to more than 704 million in 2025. 

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