It may be okay to unlock your phone, but Aussies are more reluctant to use facial recognition to purchase products.
As the use of Facial Recognition Payment Technology (FRPT) grows, taken up by retailers, governments, hotels and others, QUT researchers looked at how comfortable people would feel paying for groceries with their face.
Dr Shasha Wang said they found concerns about issues including overspending, privacy and security.
“FRPT is an emergent innovative biometric payment system that may involve more complexed consumer decision-making process due to its reliance on using consumers’ images and financial information,” Dr Wang said.
She said the global FRPT market was valued at almost $7 billion and was expected to grow at an annual of rate 20 percent to 2030.
“In China alone, it’s estimated FRPT users have exceeded 760 million since 2022.”
Report co-author Professor Gary Mortimer said shoppers were willing to trial FRPT as long as they had access to information, considered the technology would increase shopping convenience and they trusted the retailer offering it.
Professor Mortimer said participants were also keen if they were offered incentives like loyalty points or discounts to give it a go.
“However, shoppers were less willing to embrace FRPT if they were not familiar with the retailer, didn’t consider the new technology useful or were satisfied with existing payment methods like tap and go or digital payments.
“People were more likely to adopt, if they could trial in a physical store, and get access to an appropriate level of support and assistance.”
He said shoppers’ greatest concern was that FRPT might encourage them to overspend.
“But this could be addressed by introducing an ‘alert prompt’ at a certain monetary benchmark in the same way credit card providers limit a tap and go payment.”
Professor Mortimer said another issue was how private and secure such technology would be, especially in relation to facial image storage and data breaches.
Another co-author Professor Byron Keating said retailers could leverage the paper’s insights as they considered introducing FRPT to their markets.
“We recommend retailers implement instore signage, point-of-purchase graphics, on-screen videos, update their websites and social media platforms to communicate the benefits of FRPT if that’s the direction they wish to take,” Professor Keating said.
“To attract shoppers, retailers need to stress the convenience of FRPT and really drive home their security and privacy protocols.”
He said retailers would most likely have to ensure extra frontline team members were deployed at the trial stage to help customers familiarise themselves with the biometric payment technology.
