Prints at POS

Dateline: Woking, 10th July 2024.JPMorgan Chase is planning a broad roll out of biometric payments with US retailers by early next year, enabling shoppers to make purchases by scanning their palms or faces. The bank’s executive director of biometrics and identity solutions, Prashant Sharma, said “We would like every merchant to adopt this, but at the end of the day, it is going to be a merchant’s choice”. He is right, of course, but it is interesting reflect on why merchants will choose to go down this route.ShareConvenience in StoresWhen it comes to retail payments, the fact is that convenience always comes first. So while merchants and financial institutions have to have security as table stakes, consumers have to have convenience. Biometrics, when implemented correctly of course, can deliver both. This is why I share that bullish take on the technology.Subscribe nowThe U.S. is traditionally slow to advance payments technology. It adopted contactless EMV after all its peer countries and may do the same with biometric payment technology. Just one in four Americans are comfortable using a biometric hand scanner for payment. Meanwhile, 50% of Canadian and British consumers are open to adopting biometric payments and log-ins. In fact in the US, while consumer confidence in facial recognition biometrics for security purposes remains high, support for the use of the technology in retail settings has fallen significantly over the last couple of years. I think, as other observers do, that these consumer attitudes are a function of familiarity. The more exposed consumers are to biometrics…Prints at POS