Will iris scanner be killer app for Samsung jumbo phone?

By Kim Tae-gyu

People will be able to send money on Samsung Electronics’ new cell phone by just looking at it.

Korea’s major lenders said Tuesday that they are working on biometrics-based authentication, which would be enabled by an iris-scanning option built into the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that will be released later this week.

The iris scanning-powered Samsung Pass will let customers of Woori, Shinhan and KEB Hana banks carry out mobile-banking transactions with the new phone.

The mobile giant seems to be confident about the success of the new feature.

“Samsung Pass service will simplify the complicated process of authentication,” Samsung’s mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said last week during a media event. “It is the safest security technology at the current level.”

He added that Korea’s largest company will continue its talks with around 350 banks that have partnerships with Samsung Pay both at home and abroad.

Biometrics technology has developed involving the three main pillars of facial, fingerprint and iris recognition. Among them, the error rate of iris recognition is the lowest ― a person’s iris is fixed one-and-a-half years after birth and cannot be reproduced.

Observers have indicated that the iris scanner is the marquee solution of the Note 7 since its recent unveiling event in New York.

“The Note 7 comes with an improved stylus, a stronger glass screen, more storage and better water- and dust-resistance. But they are basically enhancements from the previous versions,” a Seoul analyst said.

“What most arrests my attention is the iris scanner, which is brand new. I hope to see what people will do with the new feature.”

Not everybody is optimistic about the Note 7’s new application, though, since Samsung competitors in Japan and the United States already failed to chalk up any notable successes with the same feature.

Last year, Fujitsu came up with the Arrow NX F-04G with an embedded iris scanner and so did Microsoft with the Lumia 950 but neither could take root in global markets.

Yet, the Seoul analyst pointed out that Samsung might be different.

“For the Fujitsu and Microsoft models, the iris scanner worked as a wow factor but nothing much beyond that. The function is mostly used to unlock phones and questions arose on the accuracy and speed of the process,” he said.

“In the case of the Note 7, the process seems to be reliably fast and accurate as Samsung reportedly had been preparing it for quite a long time. On top of it, the outfit appears to have arranged its actual usage along with its financial partners early on. Such efforts might bear fruit. Let’s see what is in store.”