Visa Survey Reveals Consumers Are Ready To Say Goodbye To Passwords

Indian consumers overwhelmingly favour use of biometrics as a 
faster, easier, and more secure alternative to passwords

Visa, the world’s leader in digital payments, today announced a survey, conducted on Indians exploring awareness and perceptions of biometric authentication confirms that consumers continue to have a strong interest in new biometric technologies that make their lives easier. New forms of authentication, such as fingerprint, facial, and voice recognition, can make unlocking accounts and payments much easier and more convenient than traditional passwords or PINs - which are difficult to type onto tiny keyboards, easy to forget, and can be stolen.

“The payments ecosystem is witnessing a rapid change in adoption of new form factors of payments and modes of authentication. For financial institutions, the time has never been better to integrate biometric technology into banking apps and payments experiences for customers,” said TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, Visa, India & South Asia, Visa. “We are excited with the increased popularity of biometrics across Indian consumers.  Today smartphones 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.”

Authentication Survey Findings

According to the Visa study conducted of 500 Indians by AYTM Market Research, 99% are personally interested in using at least one biometric method to verify their identity, and 99% are interested in using at least one biometric method to make payments.  Higher income consumers are more interested than lower income consumers in facial recognition. Younger consumers (36 and under) are more interested than older consumers in vein pattern recognition. Findings from the survey illustrate consumers’ desire to see the implementation of biometric tools in payment authentication processes.

Highlights from the survey include:

·         Consumers were most familiar with fingerprint recognition, with 32 percent having used it once or twice and another 63 percent using it regularly. By comparison, about 48 percent have used voice recognition in the past and 26 percent use it regularly.

·         The top benefits associated with using biometric authentication for payments are the perception that it is more secure than passwords/PINs (48%) and that it gives consumers peace of mind that their payment is protected (46%).

·         Indian consumers overwhelmingly perceive that biometrics are faster (81%) and easier (84%) than passwords.

·         Fifty one percent are concerned both about the risk of a security breach of sensitive biometric information.

To help financial institutions and merchants more quickly adopt emerging biometric authentication solutions, the Visa ID Intelligence platform provides a curated selection of leading third-party authentication technologies. Visa clients can create, test and adopt new authentication solutions with simple integrations using Visa APIs and SDKs

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks - VisaNet - that is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information visit www.visa.co.in.

16 January 2018