As consumers become increasingly comfortable using biometrics to unlock devices and log into accounts, there is a growing interest in bringing this technology to physical payment cards to provide simple-to-use multifactor authentication for in-store transactions. The Secure Technology Alliance released an introductory resource for those interested in better understanding the business case, impact and considerations for providing fingerprint-based biometric payment cards.

Visa’s Biometric Paymentsstudy, which surveyed 14,000 people across Europe, revealed that 73 percent of people think biometric security checks on a payments device is a secure authentication, with fingerprint the preference for 81% of consumers, followed by iris scanning.

Colombian digital bank Nequi plans to offer account access completely through a user’s mobile device by using biometric authentication. 

The wristband would identify a customer's unique heartbeat to verify his or her identity when using a banking app on a smartphone.

Though biometric analytics have been around for a few years now, Apple and Samsung’s recent introduction of fingerprint readers to their newest mobile devices prove that biometric security systems are going to be more and more commonplace in the public sector. The research organization Goode Intelligence estimates that biometric authentication will be on most mobile devices by the end of 2015 and that by 2019, it will be used by 5.5 billion people worldwide. Familiarity with biometric analytics means ease of use for employees and consumers alike.

Paying by iris, fingerprint or palm scans is the most popular future choice for making secure purchases, consumers say.