January 27, 2015 - Biometrics in mobile payments, banking, and a host of other mobiles services and applications are poised to transform and accelerate the globalization of mCommerce. The latest research from Acuity Market Intelligence reveals a mobile biometric marketplace more complex, broadly based, and growing faster than previous forecasts indicate.

Acuity segments the mobile biometrics into three major sectors:

• Biometric Sensors embedded in smart mobile devices: Smart Phones, Tablets, and Wearables.
• Biometric Apps offered directly by biometric vendors, or downloaded to smart devices via mobile service providers such as banks, payment processors, social media sites, retailers, or online identity providers.
• Biometric Authentication for payment and non-payment transactions provided via secure cloud-based services linked to Biometric Apps on smart devices.

Acuity projects that by 2020, global mobile biometric market revenues will reach $33.3 billion annually. This includes 4.76 billion biometrically enabled smart mobile devices generating $6 billion in biometric sensor revenue, 4 billion biometric app downloads generating $20 billion in annual revenues from direct purchase and software development fees, and 825 billion biometrically secured payment and non-payment transactions generating $6.8 billion in authentication fees.

According to Maxine Most, Acuity Market Intelligence Principal and leading independent biometric market analyst, "Mobility is the driving force that will unleash the long awaited biometric revolution."

Most, an industry thought leader with more than a dozen years of intensive focus on this now burgeoning marketplace, says "Biometrics are a natural fit for the smart mobile devices we literally hold onto nearly every waking hour. The explosion in the use of smart devices over the past five years, along with anticipated growth over the next five -- especially in developing economies where sub $100 smart phones have begun to alter the mobile landscape -- will bring biometrics into the daily lives of half the global population. By 2020, 100%l population. By 2020, 100% of smart mobile devices will include embedded biometric sensors as a standard feature."