Consumers skeptical of iPhone X face recognition

A new survey indicates that one of the defining functions of Apple’s new flagship iPhone X – the face recognition functionality – could struggle to gain traction with consumers.

Juniper Research polled iOS users in the US, and found that over 40% consider themselves unlikely to use facial recognition as a payment security technology.

Consumers in the US and UK instead showed a clear preference for fingerprint authentication and voice recognition as alternative biometric security methods, with 74% and 62% respectively indicating they are likely to use these technologies.

The research also shows that the number of contactless payment users grew by only 2% year-on-year in the US, compared to 12% in the UK.

Existing users of OEM contactless payment services (such as Apple, Samsung and Android Pay) expect to increase their usage, but only 39% of non-users in the US and 26% in the UK expect to start using mobile contactless payments.

Major obstacles to adoption include ongoing security concerns, according to research author James Moar. Two thirds of non-users (32%) have concerns about the security of transactions, compared to just 14% of users. A similar proportion of mobile banking non-users compared to users have security concerns inhibiting adoption. But security concerns are overall starting to ease.

“Transaction security is a key barrier for mobile financial services adoption,” Moar said. “Addressing these concerns will bring many consumers to the point where they will consider using such services.”