Biometric access has become an essential part of our everyday life ever since Steve Jobs introduced and reimagined the modern-day smartphone. Apple’s first biometric access capable device was introduced in 2013 alongside its iPhone 5s release, calling it the Touch ID (MacRumors Staff Touch ID). And since then, this technology has only grown more popular as Apple shifted away from the traditional fingerprint biometric towards a facial recognition biometric system named Face ID. These types of technologies are found everywhere nowadays, and we use them on a daily basis without a second thought. We’ve also grown so accustomed to using biometric access to the point that it has fundamentally changed a lot of our habits and lifestyles.

Although Apple has introduced fingerprint and facial recognition types of biometric access, it is also essential to understand that biometrics are not limited explicitly to these two. According to a leading cybersecurity solutions company Kaspersky Lab, biometric data are any physical, biological, morphological, or behavioral set of unique characteristics used to identify an individual. Thus, it could vary from a simple vocal pattern feature to a vastly complex iris recognition feature (Kaspersky What is biometrics security). Due to this technology’s various personally identifiable features, data privacy concerns have been at the center of the debates in recent years. But how concerning should we, the consumers be?

As I have mentioned in many previous discussion forums, where there is a market, there are risk-takers. So essentially, it all comes down to a healthy balance between the risks and benefits. And since this technology has brought many of the conveniences that we now come to expect, at this point, we, the consumers, would be too spoiled to do it away altogether. So, therefore, our only beacon of hope would be to bet on the future. Naturally, therefore, as the technology advances, so will be the security features.

An excellent example of such advancement is the technologies that go in your typical credit card. According to a technology article published by Forbes in late 2020, European countries are far more advanced in terms of EMV chip adoptions in their bank cards. They further noted that some European merchants are surprised when U.S travelers hand them a magnetic stripe bank card to pay, simply because Europe was so ahead of the game that they hadn’t seen a stripe card in over twenty years. In that same article, the author further concluded that the reason why the U.S was so behind in the EMV chip adaptation was not that the payment industry did not know the EMV chip is a far more superior technology. Instead, it was due to the costs involved in implementing it across such a wide array of U.S consumers (Nachreiner Council post: How the U.S. continues to lag behind in secure electronic payments).

To simply put, the payment processing industry just decided that the cost of implementing such technology was way above the annual losses from the fraudulent transactions. So now, you may ask, what changed? According to that same article, the author noted that the reason why there was a massive adoption afterward was simply due to the steep increase of fraudulent charges. Also, these payment processors were so fed up with dealing with fraudulent cards that they implemented a “quick fix” rule that shifted the financial liabilities of these fraudulent charges from them, the payment processors, to the merchants. Unfortunately, that implementation went so badly that it created an enormous public outcry to the point that the payment processors and financial institutions finally started a massive collaboration to work together and implement EMV chips for their cardholders.

Now, how does that story relate to the biometric topic? Well, think about the various financial apps that we use on our smartphones. If these gigantic banks trust the biometric method of authenticating one’s identity, why shouldn’t we? After all, they have a much higher stake in all of these technological advancements. It brings us convenience, and it brings risk mitigation to the banks. But, of course, everything comes down to the money. So, let me conclude with one of my all-time favorite quotes from Charlie Munger, an American investor, and a billionaire, “Show me the incentives, and I will show you the outcome.”

Works Cited

 MacRumors Staff. “Touch ID.” Apple, Mac, IPhone, IPad News and Rumors, 23 Aug. 2021, https://www.macrumors.com/guide/touch-id/.

Kaspersky. “What Is Biometrics Security.” Www.kaspersky.com, 13 Jan. 2021, https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/biometrics.

Nachreiner, Corey. “Council Post: How the U.S. Continues to Lag behind in Secure Electronic Payments.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 4 Dec. 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/12/07/how-the-us-continues-to-lag-behind-in-secure-electronic-payments/?sh=16109a5059cd.