Fingerprints, your voice, your face, the pattern of veins in the palm of your hand and even the colored pattern in your iris: All of these are being used in biometrics, the analysis of unique physical characteristics to verify identity. For decades, we watched Bond villains and Hollywood heads of state use these impressively futuristic methods to further their quests for world domination, but today we’re using them to buy coffee. (Take that, Jason Bourne!) . Many of us have already used Apple Pay and
Samsung Pay, which both use fingerprint scanners or Mastercard’s “selfie pay” that uses facial recognition technology, and those forms of payment are here to stay, says Majd Maksad, founder and CEO of Status Money, a personal finance management site. But biometrics are about to get a lot more exciting. “There’s a ton of innovation happening in the space, and we’re starting to see an accelerated pace of development compared to the last decade or so, when plastic has been king. It’s safe to say that the future is now.” Here’s a look at what’s ahead for the average consumer and how biometrics are going to impact our daily lives even more than they do now. READ MORE
