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When will Facial Biometrics replace Traditional Payment methods?

What has happened? Your grandfather was introduced to biometric technology through movies since the 1960s(1), and still, we have not embraced biometrics even today. Major successes we all recall from RoboCop (1987) who can identify people scanning a database, to “Minority Report” starring Tom Cruise brought up the idea of iris scanning. We dream of the future and often remain bound to existing frames we need to comply with.

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Biometric Face Payments PBF Interview FinTech Magazine

The benefits of leveraging facial biometrics (payments) today.

  • Provides a higher security standard than any other tools for payments using conventional passwords.
    ◆ A. physical characteristics of a face are almost impossible to counterfeit, if including passive liveliness detection.  
    ◆ B. Few providers like PayByFace® raised the bar adding geolocation cross-check
    ◆ C. instant receipts push notification to allow user to challenge the transaction).
  • Became the preferred option for brick&mortar businesses as an enhancement of the user experience. Speaking of the convenience and ease of use, “over 90% of participants”, of Mastercard 2016 test(2), “said that biometric payment face authentication is something they could see themselves using on a daily basis”.
  • Is the least intrusive biometric technology to validate a person’s identity using their face, and consideration is much higher than those of other biometrics. “Biometric facial authentication was overwhelmingly easy to use on its own (88%) and a clear majority found it even easier than password-based authentication (86%) (2).”
  • Reduces friction in check-out transactions, making in-store shopping more convenient, while enhancing both payments and loyalty programs experience. It helps to regain customers' loyalty in a safe social distance by improving in-person interaction and re-establishing pre-crisis shopping behavior, particularly of the hyper-hygiene-conscious ones which require innovative approaches.
  • Integrity of the service that can be used at any time without friction (except if the user decides to go offline). The technology does not require any touch of the POS machine, it is faster, simpler, and more versatile than mobile payments or fingerprints verification. 
  • Technology is relatively easy to incorporate into a current brick&mortar payment system and can bear extremely low costs and short time for implementation, allowing to capitalize on operational efficiencies.
  • High recurrent use of facial authentication transactions once used at least one time (>85% returning use according to a PayByFace® in EU test market report). 

In China, where mobile payments are among the most advanced worldwide, more than 100 million people have registered to validate face payment transactions simply by posing in front of point-of-sale check-out machines fitted with cameras. Does it mean that the entire globe is prepared to adopt facial authentication payment?

"The major drawback to consider is data privacy, there is a lot of data to store, secure, track and handle"

What is the Convenience vs Privacy ratio for Biometric face payments?

First let us clarify the difference between Face Recognition / Identification that answers the question: "Who are you?" and Face Authentication which answers the question: "Are you really who you say you are?" in order to approve a payment related to your ewallet. This misunderstanding is actually the reason why face biometrics are controversial. 

Two types of risks have been identified: a. The use of biometric data to other ends; b. The risk of re-use of data presented for biometric checks captured during their transmission. A result is a person losing control over their data, which raises privacy risks. In practice, data protection authorities seem to give preference to solutions that feature decentralized data devices to large cloud databases.

PayByFace®, a bootstrapped Amsterdam-based fintech start-up, is one the very few biometric face authentication solutions to deploy a decentralized encrypted data network. Each of its biometric eWallet users are in full control of personal data; the system enables data to remain in the user's mobile phone and converts the selfie into an encrypted biometric face template. It is called "cancellable biometrics," a concept to meet two core points: a. data is encrypted before it is stored; and b. it can be easily deleted by the user. The encrypted number is distributed, only on user demand, within the PayByFace® proprietary network in the nearby area (data follows the user and its instructions).

PayByFace Instor Biometric Payments

For many, biometrics “may still not feel right”. For those that have tried and experienced this seamlessly simpler way of payment, there is no desire to revert to the old way.

We’ve seen them asking why the biometric face authentication payments are not available everywhere?

We are used to accepting technology boundaries; if things are done in a certain way, we have to comply. This is why we carry cards, check for the phone app to touch and pay, and even easily twist our hand to validate payment with a watch. Technology is amazing and all the above seem high tech compared to cash, but even these may have the blue-rays story (short time fancy upgrade you do not use anymore). 

But what happens when you are in the center? The technology has to fully simplify your journey, and serve YOU.

Transforming Scare into Curiosity is a major step to accommodate the comfort of not even thinking of the logistics behind (do I have with me / enough / .. ) or the worry of theft / lost items. A boring check-out transaction can become a personal engaging conversation where increasing your loyalty is the only aspect that matters. 

Break free from regular worries, from old habits of the past to enjoy simplified shopping and embrace convenience.

It’s like the Matrix option to freedom: “take the blue pill” and you will continue to pay by card or “take the red pill”, and wake up in a world where just being you is enough, you being in full control of your actions and privacy. 

Get ready to enter the age of face authentication and bid farewell to complex hardware devices, cards, and even QR codes. Biometric face authentication for payments compares data for the person's characteristics to that person's biometric encrypted "template" to determine resemblance and validate a payment transaction.

Leave your card in a safety box (we mean all your cards, banking, and loyalty cards). Using the face as a highly secured virtual card for payments is not only faster and more convenient, it has enhanced security vs traditional payments, which barely rely on a PIN code. Having a stolen, lost, or forgotten wallet, a cloned card, or no phone or watch battery will no longer be a frustration. Face biometrics will be chisel away all the worry in the process. 

Developed for over four years, PayByFace® ultra-scalable on-demand decentralized architecture has four safety cross-check points for authentication and transaction validation; fully GDPR compliant. A highly accurate machine learning biometric liveliness face recognition authenticates, even when wearing a masque, while user geolocation pre-set distribution area rejects all tentative transactions as the encrypted ID number is available only within a 20km range.  

PayByFace biometric eWallet account benefits users by making “touchless” purchases with a selfie across the partners' network, without cash, card, or phone; even more relevant in today’s Covid-19 context. Loyalty programs represent a precious tool for quality data, so the retailer-customer interaction becomes more personalized & valuable. The intrinsic gamification potential through PBF’s proprietary CRM software and out-of-home digital signage content management network at point-of-sale is a significant improvement for the in-store customer engagement and loyalty level.

Biometrics face authentication will build its mark on the world by doing something that was considered almost impossible a few years ago. Biometric authentication has become the most reliable identification system to eliminate unnecessary cards, PINs, and passwords, however, its further acceptance depends on you choosing the “red pill”.



More information on PayByFace® can be found at the official website, https://paybyface.io/

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PAYBYFACE® BIOMETRIC PAYMENT & LOYALTY PLATFORM 

A Seamless, Private & Secured Face Authentication Payments Ecosystem 

To Create A Faster and More Convenient Shopping Experience


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