Making a payment using a part of your body is no longer science fiction. These are exciting days in the world of biometrics and payments. Visa and MasterCard are both working on specifications that will impact consumers globally.

Let’s take a quick tour around global world of biometric payments:

• In Nigeria, biometric data is captured by the government and centralized, enabling banks to verify the customer’s identity
• More than 80,000 biometric ATMs are in use across Japan identifying accountholders via palm or finger vein scanning
• In 2013, Citibank introduced biometric ATMs in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and they’re also live in Brazil and Poland
• More than 400,000 USAA customers have opted in to use fingerprint, face or voice recognition with the company’s mobile app
• Barclays is using finger vein readers to authenticate key corporate banking customers.