Biometrics has existed in the U.S. market for decades, largely confined to high-assurance or controlled environments such as airports, government services, and device authentication. What makes 2026 different is not a sudden technological breakthrough, but a shift in where and how biometrics are being used.

By examining the biometrics market across the groups involved in developing, deploying, using, and governing the technology — including consumers, technology providers, businesses, regulators, and educators — a clear pattern emerges. Biometrics is moving from specialized use-cases into everyday interactions, signaling an inflection point in how the technology will be experienced, regulated, and trusted in the U.S.

Historically, biometrics in the U.S. have been concentrated in controlled or high-assurance settings. In 2026, biometric use is likely to extend into more routine interactions, including retail checkout, loyalty programs, food and beverage purchases, and physical access in commercial spaces. As these use-cases grow, biometrics will become more integrated into existing user flows rather than experienced as a distinct step.

As adoption increases, public perception will continue to diverge. While some users will value the convenience biometrics provide, others will remain concerned about the collection and use of non-changeable biometric data. These concerns are reasonable and are often reinforced by privacy disclosures that are lengthy, legalistic, and difficult to interpret. Organizations that communicate biometric data practices more clearly — including purpose, access, retention, and user choice — are likely to be better positioned to build trust.

For technology providers, 2026 will remain a period of adaptation. AI-driven fraud techniques, including increasingly realistic deepfakes, will continue to evolve. In response, providers will emphasize the robustness of their solutions. However, the lack of widely accepted benchmarks for evaluating deepfake resistance will continue to make objective comparisons difficult for buyers.

From a regulatory standpoint, the U.S. privacy landscape is expected to remain fragmented. In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, organizations will continue to navigate a patchwork of state-level regulations and sector-specific requirements, adding complexity for businesses and inconsistency for consumers.

In 2026, selfie-based facial capture is likely to become a mandatory step in identity proofing for the banking sector, as identity documents alone are no longer sufficient to manage fraud risk — a transition that is already underway in certain verticals. Banking and retail are therefore expected to remain among the fastest-growing adopters of biometric technologies.

Overall, 2026 represents a transition year for biometrics in the U.S., with broader adoption driven by new use-cases and stronger fraud controls, alongside continued challenges around privacy, standards, and regulation.

As AI usage proliferates, we are witnessing both the benefits and the dangers of this technology across the digital identity sector. Deepfake technologies are maturing, making them nearly undetectable from true images, videos, or data. Presentation attacks and other AI-powered threats are easily accessible, enabling massively scalable attacks to be conducted at record volume. Businesses, individuals, and organizations face overwhelming fraud concerns even as society pushes for expanded use of digital identity systems, biometrics, and digital public infrastructure.

So, in a world where it is more difficult to determine what is true and what is fake, how can users trust what they are seeing, consuming, and accessing? What is that source of truth, that trust anchor, that can assure users that what they are consuming is valid and authentic?

Rather than relying on a new feature, we must recognize that we already have the means to defend ourselves. Liveness detection remains highly efficient in detecting AI-based threat signatures. It doesn’t matter if an identity system is operating a singular biometric, multi-modal biometric authentication, or continuous real-time session monitoring; liveness remains the core function that accurately validates the actions or identities being presented.

In 2026, we are expecting significant growth for new digital identity initiatives, such as the EUDI Wallet, new national eID programs, and growing use of DID tokens globally. Growing demand for age verification and internet safety proposals saw many nations enacting new age requirements that must be enforced throughout 2026.

Trust across the identity validation process will be critical to all participants in these transactions. Individuals must be able to trust the organizations that they share their biometric data with to complete a specific action. For the organizations, they must trust that the user making the action request is the real, validated identity, all determined through live matching of the provided biometrics against the shared source of truth. Without trust on either side of these actions, the overall risk of fraud greatly increases.

Trust will underpin all digital activities throughout 2026. Biometrics and digital identity providers must earn the trust of stakeholders, end users, and the general public through the active demonstration of responsible, ethical use of biometric data through clear, transparent usage policies. In the face of rising concerns over mass surveillance and discriminatory or biased recognition algorithms, providers who can demonstrate how high accuracy, secure data protection, and inclusive recognition functionality will gain favor.

We believe that 2025 will be remembered by the industry as a turning point for Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). For the first time, countries across different continents moved beyond strategy papers and began implementing biometric-powered and digital identity led by super-DPI (combining multiple DPIs) solutions at national scale. From Africa to Latin America and the Pacific, governments in countries such as Ethiopia, Honduras, and Papua New Guinea have laid down the foundational rails of digital identity, trust frameworks, and secure data exchange. Several more are actively piloting similar initiatives.

What makes this shift significant is not the technology alone, but the intent behind it. Governments are no longer building digital identity systems, data exchange, or payments as isolated projects. Instead, they are going for a combined approach to build a comprehensive super-DPI and treat it as a foundational layer of a broader digital ecosystem that connects citizens, public institutions, and private service providers through trusted, interoperable infrastructure.

In 2026, we will see the real impact of these investments. With foundational DPI components in place, countries will begin onboarding relying parties at scale. Banks, telecoms, healthcare providers, e-government platforms, and many other public and private entities will plug into national DPI ecosystems. At the same time, citizens will gain access to hundreds of new digital use cases, ranging from eKYC and digital payments to single sign-on and offline verification.

This transition will fundamentally change the way and the speed of digital transformation at a national scale. Biometric Digital Identity-led DPI and robust trust frameworks enable trust by design: strong encryption, selective disclosure of data, and decentralized verification significantly reduce fraud, identity theft, and other risks. As trust will increase, so will adoption, accelerating digital transactions, improving service delivery, and strengthening national security.

Importantly, in 2026 the countries adopting such approaches will also actively address one of the most critical challenges in digital transformation: inclusion. We believe that with properly designed DPI, ecosystems people will not need constant connectivity or smartphone ownership. By supporting offline verification and biometric-backed credentials, countries will be able to finally serve people that have traditionally been left behind: rural communities and individuals without access to modern phones and the internet.

This vision may sound ambitious, even idealistic. But at TECH5, we truly believe in it and have spent the last several years working closely with governments to design and deploy DPI solutions that are sovereign, privacy-preserving, and scalable. What we are seeing today is not a distant future, but the early stages of this shift.

In 2026, DPI will move from infrastructure to impact, becoming one of the main drivers of trusted, inclusive, and sustainable digital ecosystems worldwide.

Digital ID doesn’t scale because it exists; it scales when relying parties can accept it safely, repeatedly, and with measurable privacy.

2026 will not be remembered as the year the “digital wallet” arrived. It will be remembered as the year adoption became hard to avoid. Six themes shape 2026: EUDI gravity, expanding availability, age-check adoption, AI-resistant proof, liability clarity, and privacy-preserving credentials.

The EUDI deadline pulls global roadmaps forward — The EU Digital Identity Wallet is a procurement reference. Firms are standardizing early, and EU-style requirements are showing up beyond Europe: interoperability, assurance levels, privacy-by-design, and data minimization.

Verifier anchors expand beyond travel — About 45 percent of Americans live in states where mDLs are active. Passport-based Digital IDs broaden access; TSA’s program includes options in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, plus CLEAR ID, giving passport holders a TSA-accepted path even where mDLs are not live. Travel proves throughput; hospitality and retail create daily habit. Age checks at bars, venues, and deliveries are a clean wedge: one question, one decision, minimal disclosure.

AI forces a shift from identity presentation to identity proof — Deepfakes are only the headline; input compromise is the harder problem. Attacks can tamper with the sensor stream, spoof the device environment, or poison identity data. High-assurance wallets respond with cryptographic proof plus binding: device integrity, session signals, and, where appropriate, biometrics, raising assurance without turning every interaction into a data-retention event.

Enterprises buy credential plumbing, and adoption depends on liability clarity — Organizations already run a stack: CIAM, fraud controls, KYC vendors, identity stores, and policy engines. Wallet credentials land when they fit that reality with assurance mapping, governance, audit trails, and incident-response hooks. What slows deployment is accountability: if a “verified” credential later proves fraudulent, mis-issued, or misused, who owns the fallout?

Verifiable credentials revive SSI influence — Selective disclosure is moving from principle to practice, and zero-knowledge proofs are entering roadmaps to confirm attributes without exposing underlying data. In regulated sectors, BSA and AML-driven KYC obligations add urgency; reusable, verifiable KYC attributes reduce repeat proofing while improving auditability. The VC/SSI debate is settling on a hybrid: decentralized tech paired with centralized governance in governed ecosystems with trusted issuers, clear relying-party obligations, auditability, and recovery.

Bottom line — 2026 is the year of acceptance infrastructure: policy, UX, audit, operations, and liability. The question is less “Which wallet?” and more this: what proof do we accept, under what policy, and who carries the risk when it goes wrong?

Subject matter experts from Consult Hyperion, Consulting by Fime, anticipate important developments across quantum resilience, payments, transit, and agentic e-commerce through 2026:

Digital Identity, Transit, and Beyond — Transit continues to lead the way in how identity and payments converge. Account-based ticketing, open-loop acceptance, and verified digital credentials are creating travel experiences that are faster, simpler and all the while preserving privacy. What is happening in transit is now influencing how retail, mobility, and even border processes think about digital trust.

The next phase is the digital travel credential. Credentials that can prove identity, eligibility, and payment capability across transit, retail, and potentially government services whilst preserving the traveler’s privacy. Delivering this requires systems that read only the data they need, maintain high transaction speeds, and support reliable inspection and validation. It also reduces the need for agencies to issue specific closed-loop concession cards. Open-loop systems, combined with digital identity, allow benefits and entitlements to live within a trusted credential rather than a dedicated piece of plastic — ultimately saving transit agency money.

Planning for a Post-Quantum, Sovereign, and Resilient Payments World — Quantum computing is moving from theory toward practical impact, and the payments and digital identity ecosystem needs to prepare long before real vulnerabilities appear. Post-quantum cryptography is not just a new set of algorithms. It represents a redesign of how the industry builds cryptographic agility, operational continuity, and sovereign control into the payment and identity stacks.

Around the world, governments and schemes are already thinking about sovereignty and resilience. They want to ensure that critical payments and identity infrastructure can operate securely, even if networks fragment or regions become disconnected. This requires full inventories of cryptographic assets, long term migration plans, updated trust models, and new testing programs that make sure systems remain interoperable while still giving national authorities the control they need.

The Road to Agentic Commerce: Trust, Standards, and Certification — Agentic commerce is emerging as one of the most significant shifts in how transactions will be conducted. Intelligent agents will compare offers, negotiate on behalf of users, and execute payments automatically. The opportunity is enormous, but only if the industry builds the right trust foundations.

For agentic systems to function safely, clear rules are needed around who or what can act for a consumer or a business, what authority is delegated, and how accountability is enforced when something goes wrong. This demands global trust frameworks, industry standards, and certification programs that validate identity, intent, and compliance in machine-driven transactions. Without these guardrails, agentic commerce risks fragmentation, fraud, and lack of transparency.

At the same time, there is significant tension between how today’s digital ecosystem authenticates, monitors, and monetizes consumer interactions and the ways agentic AI proposes to operate. End-user license agreements, anti-fraud controls, consent models, and commercial data-driven business models all assume a human decision-maker at the point of interaction. These structures were not built for autonomous agents acting independently on behalf of users and may become meaningful roadblocks to the agentic future unless re-engineered.