IT Glossary
What is biometrics?
Biometrics is the identification or authentication of a person based on unique physical or behavioural characteristics: fingerprint, face, iris, voice or typing rhythm.
A fingerprint, a face or a voice has one advantage no password will ever match: you do not forget it, you do not write it on a sticky note, and you cannot reuse it across ten websites. Biometrics means recognising a person by unique physical or behavioural characteristics — fingerprint, face geometry, iris, voice, even typing rhythm — and it has become the default unlock method in banking and payment apps. The essential detail, which surprisingly few people know, is that in modern phone implementations the biometric data never leaves the device. The fingerprint or face is checked locally inside a secure area of the processor, and the application receives only a confirmation that this is the owner, never an image of anyone's face. For a company building a mobile app, biometrics solves two normally contradictory problems at once: security rises, because the characteristic cannot be guessed or stolen like a password, while friction falls, because authentication takes a second. The legal frame matters too: the GDPR treats biometric data used for identification as a special category with strict processing rules, which is one more reason to keep the check on the device.
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Why it matters for your business
Authentication in one second
The customer unlocks their account with a glance or a touch, removing the friction that makes people abandon apps with complicated passwords — and usage frequency rises with it.
Security without the password burden
A biometric characteristic cannot be guessed, reused from another site or talked out of someone over the phone, so classic password attacks become irrelevant to that access path.
Compliance by design
Local verification through the native iOS and Android APIs means your company stores no biometric data at all — the cleanest possible position against the GDPR's strict regime for it.
Frequently asked questions
Does my app receive the user's face image or fingerprint?
No, not if it is built correctly. On iOS and Android the biometric check happens inside the phone's secure enclave, and the app receives only a yes or no answer, optionally accompanied by a cryptographic key unlocked on success. The biometric template cannot be extracted and never reaches your servers.
What happens when biometrics fails — wet fingers, poor light?
Any serious implementation keeps a fallback: the account PIN or password. The operating system manages retries and the switch to the alternative after a few failures. The product rule is that biometrics is the convenient shortcut, never the only door, otherwise a dirty sensor means a locked-out customer.
Is biometrics legally accepted for confirming payments?
Yes. Within the strong customer authentication rules of European payment legislation, biometrics counts as the something-you-are factor and combines with possession of the phone to satisfy the two-independent-factor requirement. Banks and fintechs use it in exactly that role, with the GDPR rules on special categories applying to the data in parallel.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247