Europeans Trust Banks to Deliver Biometric Future

Helsinki, 20 September 2016: Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) – Europeans are placing their trust in banks over government agencies, according to new research from Visa to protect their biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans. Consumers are nearly twice as likely to trust banks to store and keep their biometric information safe (57%), than they are to trust government agencies (33%). When asked who they would trust to offer biometrics authentication as a service to confirm identity, the largest percentage of Europeans selected banks (84%) and payment networks (78%) ahead of big high street stores (64%) and smartphone companies (59%).

Over two-thirds of consumers (68%) want to use biometrics as a method of payment authentication and familiarity is increasing the comfort level of European consumers. The growth in fingerprint authentication for mobile payments is bringing to life the benefits of biometric authentication, which is why 73% of the European people surveyed said they were the most comfortable with fingerprint recognition. Fingerprint authentication (81%) is also viewed as the most secure form of payment, ranking higher than other biometric authentication options such as iris-scanning (76%) and facial recognition (55%).

Commenting on the Biometric Payments research, Vesa Tukonen, Finland & Baltics Country Manager at Visa said:
“Banks have a tremendous opportunity in this payment revolution. From trialling voice recognition to behavioural biometrics for authentication, we’re already seeing banks – both high street and challenger banks, alike – making positive steps to adopt this technology in a variety of use cases. This consumer confidence in both authentication as well as the storage of their biometric data gives banks the perfect win-win scenario, enabling them to provide a service that the public wants which will also benefit the banks, themselves.

“Visa is already supporting a number of institutions in the development of emerging forms of authentication. We will continue our role as an enabler of payments and will remain tech agnostic when working with banking partners to ensure that new and emerging forms of payment authentication take place securely, conveniently and discreetly.”

About the research:
Visa commissioned the Biometric Payments research with Populus. The research was conducted between 22 April and 6 May 2016 in 7 European countries: UK, Sweden, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland. The total sample size was 14,236 with around 2,000 respondents per country.

Contacts:
Olli Ollila, Pilgrim
Tel. +358 40 589 7754
[email protected]