Businesses, keen to drive digital transformation, have long walked the tightrope between incorporating new features and introducing new risks. Biometrics has helped mitigate this trade-off and empowers businesses to future-proof their systems against ever-evolving cyberattacks, streamline existing processes, and improve the customer experience.
Despite this progress, there are regular news stories of biometrics being subverted—fingerprints reproduced using HD images, and hackers and researchers hard at work attempting to fool facial recognition systems, iris scanners, and every other biometric technique.
New biometric techniques are being pioneered—vein recognition, facial expressions, ear shape and even chip implantation—but what of convenience? Do people see chip implantation as no big deal, or a sci-fi transhumanist nightmare? Finger vein recognition may be more secure, but is it sustainable for businesses to require more hardware to take payments?
What will drive the type and uptake of biometrics in the future? Will convenience or privacy limit what people are prepared to use? Or will security prevail, demanding ever-more sophisticated technologies in the arms race against hackers?
Financial inclusion efforts have delivered financial services to over 1 billion people over the last 7 years who never had access to them before. Yet, many formal financial institutions still do not see financial inclusion as viable business. The fintech space disagrees- some of the world's biggest fintechs have had incredible success providing financial services to the masses. Is technology the great leveller for the future? This session will look at the global trends happening across the developed and the developing world, and answer the questions of what is out there, what is working, how to make money, what key elements are necessary to develop successful business models and how technology will level set the financial services playing field.