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The biometric-based E-payment is an innovation electronic payment method based on the
biometric technologies. E-payment is developing very fast in the current era due to the high-
speed development of Internet. Almost everyone is using the Internet now. And E-payment has
been used in most of the business. Not only E-commerce is using E-payment, but also the
traditional business is using the E-payment technologies. E-payment and Internet have changed
and improved people’s lives hugely.

Biometric technologies are innovation technologies. Biometric technologies involve many

aspects. They conclude the fingerprint recognition and identification, facial recognition, hand
geometry capture and analysis, retina scan, iris scan and so on. Biometric means the metrics that
is related to the characteristics of humans (Biometric 2016). Biometric authentication is usually
utilized in the computer science and ICT as a method of identification recognition and access
control. However, this innovative technology inevitably has some issues existing now. Biometric
technology involves the issues such as technology implementation difficulty issue, privacy issue,
costing issue and accuracy issue.

Our research proposal is very important for the development of the E-payment. As long as we
can find a good, convenient and reliable method to improve the security of E-payment, all the
people, companies and society will benefit from it. It will be very helpful to avoid the criminal
behaviors and boost the industry and society’s development. People will avoid unnecessary
economic loss and use E-payment more frequently. Many people would not like to use E-
payment in public area because they think their bank data may be stolen and may cause
economic loss. If biometric technologies can be used to solve the security issues of the E-
payment system and improve the security, it will drive the technology revolution of the E-
payment and accelerate the E-commerce industry’s development.

After researching the biometric-based E-payment background, we find out the benefits of
biometrics. It can improve the level of convenience, accuracy, efficiency and security of E-
payment. The biometric technology is applied to some projects and products now. However, the
biometric technology is still in the early stage. It is seldomly used in E-payment. The biometric
technology is innovative and will be the trend of E-payment in the future.

In our project proposal, our aim is to discover more ways to improve the security of the E-
payment. In order to achieve the aim, four objectives are set up. Then we study the background
of the project proposal. The benefits of biometric technology are described. And the types of

3
biometric and their application is given. Then we investigate the major issues of the biometric
technology and biometric-based E-payment. After that we research the possible solutions to the
issues. Then the research significance and innovation are provided. Finally, the key points of the
proposal are concluded.

In the past couple of years, the E-payment system really has taken up its development manner
and made the life of people much easier. The online store is developing very quickly and it is due
to the development of e-payment and the tremendous improvement of the Internet. People are
used to using the E-payment system when they do E-commerce transaction, shop payment and
bank transfer. However, the security has always become a concern when people use E-payment
system. If we can utilize biometric technology to improve the security of E-payment system, it
will remove people’s security concerns when they use E-payment system. That is the point of our
project proposal focus on.

The aim of our project proposal is to discover more ways to improve the security of the E-
payment system. We believe biometric technology is an innovative and useful to improve the
security E-payment system. In order to achieve our aim, we set up four objectives. Firstly, it is
essential to consider the security issue of the biometric technology. Biometric technology is used
in creating strong security for e-payment, but the question is whether the technology itself is safe
or not. Next, we will analyze the modern problems of biometric-linked E-payment. The last but
not the least we will conduct the research to come up with a solution to the biometric-based E-
payment problem. As biometric-based E-payment is a new directive and innovative way of
payment, it is important for us to learn what people think about this new technology. We have to
survey people’s perception of the future e-payment trend, safety aspects of the biometric-based
e-payment and whether people will accept the technology, to ascertain feasibility of the e-
payment technology. In this way we can discover a more safe and convenient way to improve E-
payment.

❖ Explore and evaluate the safety of the Biometric technology.

❖ Investigate the current security issues of the Biometric-based E-payment.
❖ Research the solutions to improve the security of the Biometric-based E-payment.
❖ Investigate the feasibility of the Biometric-based E-payment.
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Biometric payments, based on end users identity through their biometrics, (e.g., fingerprint or iris
scan), are becoming popular as users perceive them to be more secure and convenient. The
difference between the biometrics authentication based on the physical/behavioral characters and
traditional way basing on passwords or PINs is that biometrics build a stronger authentication.
This paper reviews the biometric e-payments security perspective from a technical side that
considers its advantages as well as possible threats to it.

The Deployment of revolutionary technological tools in the bid to identify individuals by

passports. The studies that concentrate on intrinsic advantages of biometrics brought to light the
importance biometrics has in security. Multiple factor authentication includes fingerprint, iris, or
facial recognition, which possess a high degree of uniqueness compared to the passwords that
can be stolen or guessed (Porubsky, Jakub, 2020). This lowers the possibility for unauthorized
access and fraud transactions because it is very difficult for a third party to replicate biometric
data (Cybersecurity, 2023).

Biometric authentication becomes obsolete where the physical cards or numbers that can be
fallen off, used, or shared instead. This eliminates initial weakness through physical theft and
social media engineering that is widely used to compromise the systems (NTT DATA Payment
Services., 2023).

Emerging biometric systems incorporate continuous authentication, which verifies the user's
identity throughout a session. This can prevent unauthorized access even if an attacker gains
initial entry (Porubsky, Jakub, 2020). Additionally, liveness detection techniques can ensure the
user is physically present during transactions, further reducing fraud risks.

Despite the advancements, security concerns remain regarding biometric e-payments. One
primary concern is the storage and protection of biometric data. Data breaches exposing user
templates could compromise the entire system's security (Cybersecurity, 2023). Additionally,

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concerns exist around potential for coercion, where a user might be forced to utilize their
biometrics for unauthorized transactions.

The studies would lay stress on the use of strong data security measures. Encoding the biometric
templates and the secure storage of data are imperative to resist illegal access if the data is
breached (NTT DATA Payment Services., 2023) (LinkedIn , 2023). Also, individual control of
biometric data gathering and usage is indispensable to guarantee data protection.

Biometric authentication technology is a very dynamic area. Studies leading to the use of
behavioral biometrics and multi-factor authentication are very likely to offer a solution for an
even higher security level (Porubsky, Jakub, 2020). Nevertheless, those security protocols will
have to be periodically evaluated and released in order to abate existing threats and
vulnerabilities.

Biometrics uses different physiological characteristics to provide really high-level security

protection for online transactions, because it contained several advantages including
convenience, reliability and efficiency.

❖ Convenience: Biometric technology provides high level convenience. For example, voice
authentication is a kind of biometric technology, which only required two or three second
from the user to finish the identification process. Otherwise, the users need provide their
username or password to identify themselves, which is really time-consuming.

❖ Accuracy: Biometrics is a kind of technology based on people’s physiological

characteristics, which means each person’s unique biometric information gives the
absolute accuracy to biometric-based E-payment system.

❖ Efficiency: Without biometric-based E-payment systems, customers need to provide their

username and password in order to participate in the online transaction process.

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 Sometime, in the process the transaction could be slow down by some external factor,
such as the wrong input of username or password. However, Biometric-based E-payment
systems only need identify the customer's’ biometric information to finish the transaction
process instead of complex username or password. As a result, unnecessary fault could be
avoided and the whole online transaction process works efficiently.

Biometrics includes multiple types. Technically, human’s many parts of the body could be used,
such as fingerprint, voice, palmprint, face, iris and so on.

Type E.G.

Fingerprint scanning iTouch

Voice Recognition Door Security

Signature Recognition Cheque

Palm-print scanning ATM

Face recognition Bank

Iris scanning Personal Computer

❖ Fingerprint scanning: fingerprint authentication has been used over 100 year, and now it
has been well-developed and widely used in multiple areas, such as mobile phone
fingerprint authentication (Clodfelter, R., 2010). Users could log into the cell phone with
their default fingerprints instead of complex username and password.

❖ Voice Recognition: Voice recognition is a kind of technology based on user’s voice

information including intonation, pitch and pronunciation. However, current research has
proved that voice recognition cannot guarantee the security because of the high rate of
error (Clodfelter, R., 2010).

❖ Palmprint recognition: Palmprint recognition is based on people’s unique palmprint

information. It is quite similar with fingerprint recognition but provide higher level

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 security protection than fingerprint recognition. Currently, it is being widely used in the
identification of ATM in America (Von Graevenitz, G.A., 2007).

❖ Face recognition: Face recognition technology uses user’s face information including
nose, eyes and mouth to distinguish each user. But the error rates of face recognition are
also very high, which is up to 20%. However, many countries still use face recognition in
their passport systems (Clodfelter, R., 2010)

❖ Iris scanning: Iris scanning requests users to look into a camera from a short distance and
identifies user’s information through their eye’s iris. This technology is considered as a
kind of high-potential biometric technology, because everyone’s iris is completely unique
(Clodfelter, R., 2010). Now it is extensively used in multiple authentication area, such as
PC and banking authentication.

❖ Application: From a consumer perspective, biometric authentication could also let them
get rid of password, or even username. Apart from these, the organizations could also get
benefits from this technology. They don’t need to record the username, password or other
identity information, just a couple of fingerprints. Because of the usage of smaller
database, organizations can easily manage and protect their database.

During our research, we discovered three main issues of the security of biometrics and
biometric-based E-payment systems including privacy issue, devices security issues and
technical issues.
❖ Privacy Issue
In order to participate in the process of biometric-based E-payment, users need to provide
their own biometric information, such as fingerprint, face recognition and voice
recognition. That means their sensitive private information would be uploaded and stored
into the online database system. If the database is not safe enough, user’s private
information would be leaked out through internet, which will cause unexpected losses
(Clodfelter, R., 2010). Besides, most biometric technology users usually use only a kind
of biometric-based payment method, such as fingerprint authentication, which means if
their biometric information leaked out, it would also affect user’s other account. So user
privacy is a vital issue of biometric- based E-payment system.

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 ❖ Devices Security Issue
Basically, in order to accomplish biometric-based online transactions, biometric-based
devices are required. As a high-tech payment method, biometric-based devices are
usually quite expensive, and the manufacturers might use some cheap components
instead of expensive components to reduce cost. That makes the biometric-based devices
lost the ability of ensuring security and the security of the transaction could not be
ensured (Ahmad, S.M.S., Ali, B.M. & Adnan, W.A.W., 2012). On the other hand, even
the devices have the great quality; the whole transaction could be hacked by some Trojan
virus. So how to ensure the security of biometric-based devices has become an important
topic.
❖ Technical Issue
Although biometrics is currently being used widely, it is still a new technology. As a high
profit technology, manufactures might provide unreliable testing data to overstate the
security of biometric technology (Ahmad, S.M.S., Ali, B.M. & Adnan, W.A.W., 2012).
Besides, early tastings were usually carried out under a limited amount of subjects and
poor laboratory conditions. All these unreliable testing results could mislead the
development and innovation of the security of biometric-based E-payment systems
(Ahmad, S.M.S., Ali, B.M. & Adnan, W.A.W., 2012). Apart from these, because of the
high speed development of E-commerce, many new business area try to use biometrics to
improve their systems, so many new elements have been added into testing process,
which makes the whole testing process goes harder.

In order to study the security of biometric-based E-payment system, we examined several current
possible solutions. As follow:

❖ Multimodal biometrics
For the purpose of enhancing the security of biometric-based authentication, a technology
that has been considered to be the best alternative is the Multimodal biometrics
(Prabhakar, S., Pankanti, S. & Jain, A.K, 2003).
The term multimodal biometrics is applied to a set of biometric methods that use more
than one type of biometry, e.g. face thermograms. Multi-modal biometric could possibly
be the next technological advancement that could add verification and identification
validity to biometrics (Prabhakar, S., Pankanti, S. & Jain, A.K, 2003). One method,
among others that can be utilized, is the pairing up of fingerprints, and voice recognition
during biometric-based payment process in order to make the transaction secured and
enjoys resistance from the other parties.

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 ❖ Using different biometric authentication in different area
The difficulty with the biometrics is that the biometric-based authentication cannot be
revoked when needed (Prabhakar, S., Pankanti, S. & Jain, A.K, 2003). For instance, if a
hacker were to compromise your biometric data, they could use it to break your system
security. So, it is necessary for users to use different biometric authentication in different
account, which could avoid above-mentioned situation. For example, you could use your
fingerprint as the unlocking of your mobile phone and your voice recognition as your
payment authentication. By this way, customers account would not be easily hacked by
others.

❖ Data-Hiding Technology
Another way to enhance the security of biometric-based E-payment system is to use data-
hiding technologies to combine both biometric-based E-payment method and the
traditional E-payment method. Adding extra information into the biometric data could
make customer's private information more complex and safety (Ratha, N.K., Connell,
J.H. & Bolle, R.M., 2001). We could add dynamic enciphered message into user’s
biometric information in order to improve the security of biometric-based E-payment
system. For example, during voice authentications, systems could ask customers to read
some particular numbers or the answers of some simple questions, which could reduce
the rate of being hacked by Trojan virus.

During our research, we studied numerous international peer-reviewed journal and essays as well
as some industry report and cases, which are related to the protection measures for biometric-
based payment systems.

Current research investigates the issues of biometric technology, but there is little research about
the issues in E-payment based on biometric technology. Our research is trying to help to fill this
gap.

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With the high-speed development of E-commerce system, E-payment plays a more important
role than before. At the same time, the safety of E-payment system has becoming increasingly
more vital as well. Thanks to the accuracy and reliability of biometrics, biometric authentication
technology is now considered as a better way to enhance the security of online transaction,
especially for the E-payment systems.
Through biometric-based E-payment, both customers and organization could get benefit. The
largest benefit for the customers is that customers could enjoy improved-speed online
transactions. Compared with the complex username and password, customers could easily
accomplish their transaction by press the devices and provide their fingerprints. Apart from the
convenience of biometric-based E-payment, customers could also get security protection during
online transactions when using biometric-based E-payment systems. Thanks to the unique
characteristics of biometrics, each transaction could be distinguished clearly, so the customers do
not need to worry about security issues. From an organization perspective, biometric-based E-
payment refers to high level value. On one hand, biometric-based E-payment requires smaller
database than other traditional E- payment methods. All the organization need to do is to input
each customer's biometric information instead of complex username or password. On the other
hand, biometric-based technology is considered as the future trend of the development of
authentication, so using biometrics on payment system could help the organization survive in the
competitive business environment.

Biometric technology could play a vital role in enhancing the security of E-payment system.
Biometrics provides identification of customers through their physiological characteristics such
as fingerprints, palmprints and face recognitions. Each of these parts refers to the user’s unique
information, which makes biometrics such a valuable technology for ensuring the security of E-
payment. However, although biometrics has the great practicability including efficiency,
convenience and accuracy, it still has some security issues. As to the privacy issues, which are
also considered as the biggest issue of biometrics, the uploading of customer’s essential
information makes biometrics facing the high risks caused by information leakage. And we
found that these issues have become the main limitation of the development of biometric-based
E-payment systems. In our proposal, we are going to address and try to solve these issues.
Due to the significant ability of biometrics, we found our research quite valuable. During the
research, we studied the main issue and current solution of the security of biometric-based E-
payment systems and provide possible solutions for enhancing the security of biometric- based
E-payment method. Our proposal is going to examine reliable and verifiable data for other
researchers and people with less knowledge about biometric-based E-payment.
Eventually, we will try our best to make contribution to the E-payment revolution.

11
Biometric technology is a wide topic, so we use three different methodologies to do research
including literature review, case study and depth-structured interviews.

❖ Literature Review

In order to get data and information of biometrics efficiently and straightforwardly, we need to
scan numerous cases and reports through relevant literature reviews. In this case, the literature
review is the most efficient method for the study of biometric technology. During our research,
we obtain much information related to biometric technology. By this method, we had a clear and
deep understanding of the safety of biometric technology and the issues of biometric-based E-
payment technology. We studied many current science and development of biometric
technology. Through numerous data and information, we discovered several issues of the
security of biometric technology and biometric-based E-payment. Additionally, we identified the
search keywords during our study, such as E-payment and security of biometric. These key
words help us to locate the correct articles about our topic. Through in- depth mining, we
eventually find the research gap and determine the direction of our study.

❖ Case Study

In the studying process, we found some particular case studies, especially some of the existing
solutions for the safety of biological e-payment technologies. Through the investigation of
qualitative data, we found less case related to the security of biometric-based E-payment with
solutions or recommendations. The cases of the security of biometric-based E-payment were a
certain degree of researches that list data, tables and information. It is useful to illustrate the
biometric e-payment security technology for current development and it has reached the results.
The study of particular cases is also using the research exploratory. Through the research, we
found that there are a few article about improving the safety of the biological payment
technology. These articles mainly focusing on how to improve the biological safety payment
technology. Compared with the traditional password-based payment system, biometric-based
payment technology uses the physiological characteristics of human identity verification, and
each person's unique physiological characteristics is the basis for biological validation. However,
the biotechnology is in a rapid development and not completely mature, there are still some
problems need to be resolved. Different from literature review, the information from case study
is more reliable and abundant, and it provides valuable data for our future research. So as to find
more efficient solution for the security issues of biometric-based E-payment system.

12
 ❖ Interview

Although biometric E-payment technology is a more advanced technology, its recognition to the
public of is not high. So we need to find people who understand biometric technology to do the
targeted questionnaire. To make the results more accurate and the investigation is meaningful;
we decided to select particular subjects with basic recognition about biometrics. By using the
method of interview, we collect some UTS students’ understanding of biometric e-payment
technology as well as their understanding of the future trend and the perception of security. Thus
we can study the feasibility of biometric e-payment technology.

1. Have you ever heard of ‘biometric-based E-payment’?

2. Have you ever used biometric-based E-payment technology? If so, what is that?
3. When doing the online transaction, will you accept fingerprints or iris scanning as your
payment method instead of traditional password?
4. Why you can/cannot accept it?
5. Do you think the security of biometric-based E-payment is high or low? Why?
6. How do you think about the development trend of biometric E-payment technology?

For research purpose, we will try to collect 20 questionnaires among IT professional’s students
in UTS, because IT students would have a better understanding of biometrics and they might use
biometric-based E-payment method more frequently than others. This will make the findings
more practical. Through this exploratory research, eventually, we will collect valuable qualitative
data, which would also help us to make better research planning skills in the future.

13
Biometric-based E-payment technologies use unique physiology about people’s behavior to
provide more secure, quick and convenient transaction. Biometric-based E-payment technology
changes the user’s habit of payment. Eventually, this method will be the future trend and take
place of traditional payment methods. At present, biometric-based E-payment technology has
been applied to various aspects of people's life, such as Apple pay, fingerprint unlocking and iris
scanning. But the safety of biometric-based E-payment still has some complex issues.
For example, face recognition and fingerprint recognition are normal requirements of the
physical characteristics of people for the execution of transaction. But fingerprint and face
information can be considered as the customer's privacy. These personal data would be uploaded
to the database during transactions. If the database is not safe enough, then customers’ privacy
will be leaked out through internet, which would cause serious privacy issues. Besides, if the
database is lost or damaged, it will affect the realization of the transaction directly. Moreover, the
identification of the biometric process of E-payment also needs to be addressed. Because in the
payment process, there might be a case of failure to identify the impact of transaction’s
successful rate.

So, our research focuses on the security of biometric-based E-payment through qualitative data
and depth-structured interviews. Through the research, we found several possible ways to solve
issues related to the security of biometric-based E-payment technology. One of the methods is
called multimodal biometric technology. It uses a variety of biological recognition technologies
in payment process. This method makes transactions more secure and reliable than single
biotechnology. There are other biometric-based E-payment technologies methods. For example,
micropayment uses fingerprint recognition while large payment uses iris recognition. That means
high-level risk payment could be protected by more strict biometric recognition. Apart from use
single biometric technology, we can also use data hiding technique, and the combination of
traditional dynamic password and biometric payment technology would drastically hide the
private information in order to ensure the safety of information and guarantee the success of
online transactions. We would find more solutions to enhance and improve the security of
biometric-based E-payment system in future research.

14
Ahmad, S.M.S., Ali, B.M. & Adnan, W.A.W., 2012. Technical issues and challenges of biometric
applications as access control tools of information security. International journal of innovative
computing information and control, Volume vol. 8, no. 11, , pp. pp. 7983-99.

Clodfelter, R., 2010. Biometric technology in retailing: Will consumers accept fingerprint
authentication?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 17, (no. 3, ), pp. pp. 181-8..

Cybersecurity, 2023. Benefits of Using Biometric Authentication in Online Payments.. [Online]

Available at: linkedin.com/pulse/securing-transactions-rise-biometric-authentication-payment-0wrbe

LinkedIn , 2023. How Is Biometric Technology Enhancing The Ease And Security Of Digital Payments?.
[Online]
Available at: linkedin.com/advice/1/what-do-you-your-payment-system-needs-enhanced-
dxxkc?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_feed-article-content

NTT DATA Payment Services., 2023. Biometric Payment System: 5 Benefits, Types and Working.. [Online]
Available at: nttdatapay.com/blog/web-stories/thing-you-should-know-about-biometric-payment-
system/

Porubsky, Jakub, 2020. Biometric Authentication in M-Payments: Analysing and improving end-users’
acceptability. Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet.

Prabhakar, S., Pankanti, S. & Jain, A.K, 2003. 'Biometric recognition: Security and privacy concerns. IEEE
Security & Privacy, Issue no. 2, , pp. pp. 33-42..

Ratha, N.K., Connell, J.H. & Bolle, R.M., 2001. Enhancing security and privacy in biometrics-based
authentication systems. IBM systems Journal, vol. 40(no. 3), pp. pp. 614-34..

Von Graevenitz, G.A., 2007. Biometric authentication in relation to payment systems and ATMs.
Datenschutz und Datensicherheit-DuD, vol. 31(no. 9), pp. pp. 681-3..

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