A recent survey by Regula, a global developer of identity verification (IDV) solutions and forensic devices, indicates that biometrics is viewed as the leading essential tool for future fraud prevention. The findings suggest that as impersonation attacks, including deepfakes, affect a third of businesses worldwide, companies are enhancing their defenses with biometric verification, valuing its accuracy, scalability, and compliance.
According to the survey responses, biometrics exhibits strong adoption and retention rates, demonstrating the lowest drop-off rate among users globally and the highest growth potential, with 21% of non-users planning to integrate it soon.
Currently, most organizations rely on established fraud prevention methods such as MFA (SMS codes, OTPs, app confirmations), utilized by 40% globally; behavioral biometrics (typing, swiping patterns) by 23%; and basic biometrics (fingerprints, face scans) by 22%. While these tools have been effective against common fraud, the evolving threat landscape, which now includes sophisticated deepfakes and synthetic identities, necessitates more advanced solutions.
When surveyed about their ideal future technology stack, companies consistently identified biometric verification as a core component. It is noted for user simplicity, business scalability, and regulatory trust, and is rarely discontinued once implemented. For sectors like aviation (29%), crypto (26%), and healthcare (26%), biometric verification is the top fraud-prevention tool.
Some sectors, such as banking and telecom, are re-evaluating their priorities, focusing more on fraud analytics, dark web intelligence, and compliance tools like watchlists, alerts, and liveness checks. However, biometrics remains an integral part of a broader, hybrid defense strategy designed to address emerging threats and regulatory mandates.
Human review is ranked second in the ideal stack, primarily in compliance-intensive markets like Germany and Singapore, where regulatory frameworks often require human approval for sensitive decisions. Banking and crypto industries frequently adopt this model to ensure accountability and customer rights.
MFA remains widely used, particularly in banking, healthcare, and telecom. Its adoption in fintech is projected to increase from 23% to 31%. The role of MFA is evolving; it is increasingly seen as a supporting safeguard that functions optimally when combined with robust biometric checks, rather than serving as the primary defense.
Ihar Kliashchou, Chief Technology Officer at Regula, stated, “The fraud landscape has changed dramatically, with sophisticated impersonation attacks becoming mainstream. The future of fraud prevention isn’t about relying on easy-to-deploy solutions in isolation. It’s about building resilient, layered defenses with advanced biometric verification as a backbone and orchestration tying it all together.”These findings are part of Regula’s study, “Identity Verification 2025: 5 Threats and 5 Opportunities,” which is available for download from Regula’s website. Regula has over 30 years of experience in forensic research, providing hardware and software solutions for document and biometric verification to over 1,000 organizations and 80 border control authorities globally. The company was recognized in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Identity Verification.
