As Identity Week America Opens, Aevi Study Reveals 62% of Americans Think Biometric Payments Will Be The Norm But Only 37% Trust Companies With Their Data

LONDON, Sept. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As security leaders gather for Identity Week America, research from Aevi has found that Americans have largely decided biometric payments will become the norm yet trust in the companies handling that data has fallen behind. This undeniable gap may prove the biggest obstacle to adoption.

In a survey of more than 3,000 adults across the US and UK, Aevi found that:

• 62% of Americans expect biometric payments to become one of the most common ways to pay in person within the near future
• A mere 37% trust companies to protect their biometric data (compared with 48% in the UK)
• Concerns about privacy and data misuse are between 58% and 66% across every US age group
• Between 40% and 47% of Americans fear government access or surveillance (nearly double the UK range of 23% - 37%)

Awareness is rapidly rising with unfamiliarity in the US falling from the 46% of Aevi's previous study to 30% today, but expectation suggests inevitability instead of enthusiasm.

Generational patterns also break the assumption that younger consumers are more open to adoption. Just 30% of Americans aged 18 to 24 trust companies with their biometric data, while 40% actively distrust them. Meanwhile, 55% of Americans over 65 remain unfamiliar with the technology altogether.

The survey also gathered thousands of qualitative, open-text responses, where objections were rarely technical. One American respondent wrote: "Our government has proven time and time again how it cannot be trusted. On a business level, corporations have also proven time and time again they can't be trusted." Another put it more bluntly: "Companies need to be more trustworthy. They sell data way too willingly."

Mike Camerling, CEO at Aevi, said: "As we've seen across our more recent consumer research, whether it's about agentic commerce to digital currencies in in-person payments, control and trust remain consistent pressure points. Biometrics lands firmly within that same pattern. The technology itself might not be the barrier, but how it's understood clearly is, how transparently it operates, and how much control people feel they retain."

Aevi's "Biometric Payments and Consumer Trust" examines how trust, control and transparency are shaping the next phase of in-person payments.

SOURCE Aevi