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The financial industry's technology leaders gathered in San Francisco this week for the Finovate Spring 2013 conference. The event gave a lot of insight into the future of technology in the financial industry. If you weren’t able to make it, here are three things you missed that you should know, according to Credit Union Times:
1. Google Wallet is dead.
Experts at Finovate are unanimous in saying that Google Wallet is dead. Google wasn’t able to get much customer interest in the mobile wallet, largely because it’s only on a handful of smartphones. Another barrier was the fact that many merchants weren’t able to accept payments with it because they needed to be able to accept NFC technology. Experts say that Google Wallet will stick around as an online payment tool, but Google will stop pushing the mobile wallet idea for now because it seems customers and merchants aren’t ready for it.
2. Picture payments are picking up steam.
Mobile bill pay use isn’t what it should be, and that’s mainly because it’s hard to enter a lot of data (account numbers, etc…) on small screens. It seems that the solution might be picture payments, where a customer takes a photo of their bill and their phone automatically detects the important data listed on the bill. This technology was featured at Finovate and seems to be gaining traction. However, an article by the American Banking Association says that the technology still isn't ready to compete with traditional mobile bill pay methods.
3. Biometric logins are getting mixed reactions.
Experts at Finovate agree that the current system of usernames and passwords need to be replaced. Login hacks are becoming more common, and the financial sector needs a good alternative. One promising solution could be biometric logins. This technology would allow a customer to log in to their account using an eye scan, a facial scan or a voice authentication. But financial institutions are hesitant to adopt this technology fearing that it could present a lot of support problems. Most financial institutions weren’t ready to say they wanted to use biometric logins. At least not yet.
