Buying and Selling | Biometric Payments are the Future

On May 17 News of the Beast posted a story about how the United Arab Emirates intended to monetize their national biometric ID card issued by the Emirates Identity Authority and use it as a vehicle for payment. Well, according to experts meeting at the Biometrics Institute Asia Pacific Conference in Sydney, Australia, the rest of the world will soon follow at the UAE's heels. 

They believe that in the future, all payments will be biometrically authenticated electronic payments. There will be various modes for providing biometric identification for payment. But they all use biometrics that are employed along with an electronic device such as a mobile phone or smart watch.

According to Revelation 13, there is coming a time when no one will buy or sell without the mark of the beast. As we watch events unfold, we believe that that time is not far off.

Biometrics eyed for secure future payments

Biometrics look like the future of authentication for payments, according to payment experts at the Biometrics Institute Asia Pacific Conference in Sydney.

“The idea that you can use your body to get access to your funds is I think very attractive,” said Arun Kendall, industry policy manager for the Australian Payments Clearing Association.

Biometrics makes sense for payments because it’s a better experience for customers while simultaneously providing higher security, agreed Tony Eyles, a product development manager at Kiwibank.

While the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks are testing many types of biometrics, one of its managing directors, Santiago Uriel Arias, warned that not all users will be comfortable handing over personal biometrics data to a bank.

A client once told Arias that she give her voice, eye or fingerprint identity data to a policeman, but never to a bank, he said.

Older users are more likely to be resistant to biometric security than others, said Kendall. “It’s a generational issue that might not be around in a couple years’ time.”

The panellists appeared most upbeat on fingerprint authentication catching on with users, but cautioned that the future is not decided.

The inclusion of a fingerprint scanner on the most recent Apple iPhone “points the way forward” for how electronic payments could be done securely in the future, said Kendall.

PayPal has also gone down the fingerprint road with its new app for the Samsung Galaxy Gear II smart watch, noted Santiago Uriel Arias, a managing director at the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks.

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