Factors Determining the User Adoption of Biometric Authentication in Sri Lankan Payment Channels

Abstract

Payment channels have become an essential element in people’s lives. There are many emerging payment channels in Sri Lanka such as EDC (Electronic Data Capture)/ POS (Point of Sale)/ kiosks/ Internet Payment Gateway/ Mobile based payment solutions. With the emergence of new payment channels individuals have shown keenness on moving to digital payment channels instead of traditional methods because of its convenience. Despite its popularity it has become a source for financial frauds. The main reason being the lack of security and privacy of payment channels. Most payment channels use traditional authentication methods such as passwords, PIN (Personal Identification Number), OTP (one-time password), or digital cards. These authentication methods are vulnerable, and they are quite often compromised by fraudsters. There financial organisations are now looking at a more user/customer centric authentication method. Biometric is a user/customer centric authentication method where the authentication happens using a biometric trait of the user/customer. Since most Sri Lankans are not tech-savvy it is somewhat of a challenge to make customers use payment channels that has biometric authentication. Therefore, this study looks at the factors that will determine the user adoption of biometric authentication. In order to identify potential factors that could affect biometric adoption a comprehensive literature review was conducted. What previous researchers around the world have discovered were useful in deciding the potential factors; security and privacy, reliability, usefulness, and ease of useTo quantify the impact of each factor on biometric adoption a quantitative research study which had 390 respondents was conducted by the author. After a thorough analysis of the responses, it was identified that security and privacy, reliability, usefulness, and ease of use influences the user adoption of biometric authentication in Sri Lankan payment channels. The author believes this report will be beneficial to various stakeholders in the financial industry and the information technology industry in Sri Lanka as well as similar demographic segments.