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SALT LAKE CITY — We're not quite saying good riddance to all of our passwords yet, but biometric scanning is going mainstream in the very near future.
In the age of big data breaches, the banking industry appears to be leading the charge.
MasterCard may soon use selfies to thwart identity thieves. This fall, the company will begin testing a payment system that uses your phone to scan your face or fingerprints when you're shopping online. No match? No fraudulent shopping spree.
Utah-based Mountain America Credit Union has already launched a smartphone banking app that includes two biometrics.
"We love the biometrics because it's easy," said Shelby Johnston, manager of product strategy at the credit union.
Members can choose to have their fingerprints verified before they check their balance or take out a loan. Or they can have their eyeballs scanned, or both.
"It maps the blood vessels in your eyes and it does a couple of patterns. And those do not change, no matter how old you get. If you're sick one day, so you have bloodshot eyes, those do not change," Johnston explained.
Passwords, on the other hand, are easily guessed or hacked.
"You don't have to remember those complex passwords. Every single time you log in you can utilize your biometrics to pass that secure information," Johnston said.
Banks are racing to adopt voice and facial recognition along with iris and fingerprint scans. Apparently patrons are demanding it. A recent survey found two out of three Americans believe biometrics are more secure.
Nothing is 100 percent secure. But Mountain America says even if cyber crooks hack into their secured computer servers, they cannot steal your biometrics. Those remain encrypted in your phone.
"They store it on a secure element on the device," Johnston said. "There's nothing stored in the cloud. There's nothing off the device for that information to be stolen."
