For all those believers in the NFC-based mobile payment revolution--and there are plenty of true believers right now--security issues cannot be ignored. We noted elsewhere a recent study that found that the percentage of smart-phone equipped respondents who believe mobile banking is either "unsafe" or "very unsafe" zoomed from 26 percent up to 40 percent in just 12 months. Which raises the question: Which companies will take the reins when it comes to security solutions? Will any entity come out with anything truly new in terms of authentication? 

We raise the issue in light of recent research from Goode Intelligence that predicts the market for mobile phone biometric security services will grow significantly over the next five years, from $30 million now to more than $161 million in 2015. So far, we're seeing few signs of eventual mass market adoptions. Apart from the Motorola ATRIX tablet, which includes a biometric fingerprint sensor feature, real applications have been scant. But there's a lot of development work underway. Unisys, for example, is said to be working on some biometric security tools. 

More companies will find themselves under pressure to do more on the security front. As NFC-based payments heat up, you have to wonder if the likes of ISIS (owned by the big telcos), Google, card companies and the many banks eyeing the market plan to respond with biometrics-based solutions. Hopefully, we see more of these services rolled out to protect remote services, like NFC-based payments as well as to protect devices. 

George Peabody, Director of Emerging Technologies Advisory Service at Mercator, points out in a release that "authentication is the heart of payments and online security. Smartphones with hardware-based security capability, especially via NFC and fingerprint readers, will give consumers, enterprise users, and the government unprecedented control over their payment and security interactions." 

The early biometric applications will likely be fingerprint readers and voice-based products, which could be marketed for the Wow factor as well as the security factor. 

But you can imagine a wider variety of applications. Biometric Intelligence and Identification, for example, has come up with a product that incorporates iris, facial and fingerprint recognition into a smartphone-enabled solution, giving nearly instantaneous identification results to a law enforcement official. For banks and broker dealers that want to go the extra mile for employees who use smartphones to make trades and access sensitive client data, something likes this might be the ultimate solution. Obviously, it'll be expensive. 

In any case, we fully expect more biometric solutions to crop up. - Jim