Software-based Facial Recognition for Payments User Base Will Increase in the Digital Era

The users for the software-centric facial recognition systems to secure digital payments will rapidly grow in the pandemic era, exceeding 1.4 billion users by 2025 – reveals a Juniper Research study.

With the increasing digital transformation projects across businesses, the number of global users for software-based facial recognition for securing payments will surge rapidly. A recent research study from Juniper Research reveals the number will reach 1.4 billion worldwide by 2025.

It was only 671 million in 2020 and this rapid growth of nearly 120% demonstrates how crucial facial recognition devices have become. It has been fuelled by its low barriers to entry, a front-facing camera, as well as appropriate software.

The research found the implementation of Face ID by Apple as an accelerating growth factor of the widespread facial recognition market. This is despite the challenges to facial recognition for the period of the pandemic with face mask usage.

Also Read: Are We Ready for Facial Recognition Technology?

The research suggests that facial recognition technology vendors implement rapidly evolving AI-based, robust verification checks to ensure the validity of the user identity. Otherwise, they will risk losing user trust in the authentication process as the spoofing attempts increase.

Furthermore, the study indicates that fingerprint sensors will feature on almost 93% of biometrically equipped smartphones by 2025. It compares favorably to hardware-based facial recognition – with only 17% of biometrically equipped phones featuring such capabilities in 2025.

Although the fingerprint sensor devices will be dominant in the market, Susan Morrow, one of the authors of the report mentioned – “Hardware-based facial recognition is growing, but the ability to carry out facial recognition via software is limiting its adoption rate.”

She continued, “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.”

Also Read: China to Use AI-Powered Facial Recognition to Fight Fraud

The study also suggests that the use of voice recognition for payments is growing – from 111 million users in 2020 to more than 704 million in 2025. It was identified that at present, voice recognition technology is mostly used in banking. However, it will struggle to grow beyond this with the critical concerns around robustness.

Technology vendors are highly recommended to adopt a multi-method biometric strategy – which encompasses fingerprints, facial recognition, voice, and behavioral indicators in order to ensure a secure payment ecosystem.