Fingerprint Readers Find Uses for Consumers

Fingerprint technology has found a place in a variety of commercial use cases. We can simplify this by considering these in two broad categories – public and personal fingerprint readers. Public readers are used by (or on) many individuals, for example in banking, law enforcement and border control. Personal readers are deployed in consumer electronics such as smartphones and payment cards and for the purpose of this report we shall call these ‘consumer fingerprint readers’.

The aim of this article is to summarise the similarities and differences between these consumer use cases, the implications for the security/convenience balance and how the issue of trust may play a part in this.

Smartphones and payment cards

The differentiation of these use case categories has become more acute in the post-pandemic world. To retain acceptance, fingerprint technologies in applications such as ATMs and border control may have to rely on trusted and obvious disinfection between users.