Global Biometrics for Banking and Financial Services Market to Reach $8.9 Billion by 2026 The turn of next decade is expected to be more challenging for banks and financial institutions as security breaches become more sophisticated with technology advancements. Money laundering has become more widespread representing about 2%-5% of global GDP. One of the measures being actively pursued by banks is biometrics, since the technology assists in the creation of secure banking environment by reducing instances of identity fraud, establishing audit trail of transactions, and protecting financial data. The shift towards biometrics is also being driven by the inability of traditional security measures such as PINs, passwords and tokens to effectively offer protection, particularly against the growing sophistication of intruder attacks. The growing realization among banking customers about inadequacies of PINs and passwords in offering protection against sophisticated bank frauds and online threats is leading to high demand for strong security solutions such as those involving biometrics. Further, steady increase in the number of password hacks in recent times reflects inadequate security associated with the use of passwords as access method. Driven by the growing need to offer protection against the rising instances of fraudulent transactions and identity thefts along with the ever-widening scale of frauds, banks are opting to invest into strong authentication measures.