One of the rumored features of the Samsung Galaxy S8 is a facial scanning system that could reportedly be used to facilitate mobile payments. Unfortunately upon the handset’s launch, it was discovered that the feature could be easily bypassed by using a photo. It was later revealed that the feature was only meant to be for “fun” and not for serious usage.So what about in the future? Could it eventually become secure enough for mobile payments? According to a report from The Investor, they quote a source from Samsung and industry watchers who are claiming that the company’s technology is nowhere near ready for such use, and that we might be more than four years away from it becoming viable.
The source was quoted as saying, “In order for facial recognition to be solely used for financial transactions, it would take more than four years considering the current camera and deep learning technology levels.” Samsung has also issued a statement in which the spokesperson said, “We do not need to use facial recognition for mobile financial transactions because there are already high-level biometric technologies such as iris and fingerprint recognition. The question that when it will be used is meaningless.”
As it stands over in South Korea, the handset’s iris scanning feature will be used for financial transactions. Prior to this the feature could only be used to log users into their accounts, but it can now be used to verify and authenticate payments.