Year in Review: Can Biometric Fingerprint Recognition Reclaim Its Position?

FindBiometrics Year in Review Survey for 2021 is now open, collecting responses from biometrics professionals and industry watchers in order to gain valuable insights into the most important trends in the space. There will be keen interest in a number of specific areas, with industry sentiment over fingerprint biometrics looking to be among the most intriguing.

Fingerprint biometrics was the modality that drove the mobile biometrics revolution over the past decade, with fingerprint sensors proliferating across smartphone models from various brands in the wake of Apple’s fingerprint-scanning iPhone launched in 2013. But while fingerprint sensors remain a fixture in contemporary smartphones, facial recognition has stolen much of the spotlight in recent years.

With its surging popularity for smartphone authentication and its increasing use in areas like passenger screening at airports, face biometrics has consistently been ranked as the top modality in FindBiometrics’ most recent Year in Review surveys. That having been said, fingerprint recognition has consistently ranked second – until the pandemic hit, that is.

During the first half of the pandemic, concerns about the transmissibility of COVID-19 through touching shared surfaces prompted many organizations to abandon their use of fingerprint scanning for things like access control and time and attendance tracking. Accordingly, the fingerprint modality was knocked into third place in 2020’s Year in Review, having been usurped by iris recognition – which, like facial recognition, is contactless.

A year later, there is much less concern about the transmissibility of COVID-19 through shared surfaces as a growing body of evidence has made it clear that airborne transmission is the primary vector. Meanwhile, enthusiasm about biometric payment cards has been on the rise, with 2021 having delivered some of the first major commercial launches of fingerprint-scanning credit cards. And in the mobile sector, in-display fingerprint sensors have become more commonplace as well (though not always to the benefit of end users). Could fingerprint recognition reclaim its position as the second-most popular modality? The results are still coming in – be sure to input your two cents, if you haven’t already.