• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 16, 2015

Millennials not only get mobile, they see it as their channel of choice for pretty much any transaction.

Whether opening accounts, banking or making purchases, millennials increasingly lean on their smartphones.

In the no-surprise department, most (86%) millennials make purchases and conduct transactions from their smartphones, based on a new study.

Millennials also have specific phone behavior preferences.

For example, 68% prefer to use their phone camera rather than manually typing to get information into their phone and 28% want to enroll for everything from a new credit card to a gym membership by snapping a picture of their driver’s license, according to the study.

The report, which focused on mobile preferences, is based on a survey of 1,000 consumers 18-to-34 years old, conducted by Zogby Analytics for Mitek.

Growing up mobile, 68% of millennials got their first exposure to mobile capture with mobile check deposit and 40% of them wish there was more mobile capture functionality in banking.

Consistent with studies of other demographics, Mitek found that the majority (54%) of millennials say security trumps convenience when using a mobile device.

The security focus is causing a move to the mass adoption of biometric authentication, with biometrics being used for about 50% of mobile transactions, including banking shipping and enrollment next year, according to the study.

Fingerprint readers in phones are aiding in the behavioral change of consumer habits. For example, a locked iPhone can be more quickly opened by a fingerprint scan than typing in a 6-digit code.

And voice recognition continues to improve to the point that it will become the norm next year, according to Mitek.

Using a phone’s camera to open an account is 50% faster than the traditional method of data entry, according to the study, and mobile account opening will overtake desktop account opening by 20% in 2016.

Advances in camera technology will make smartphones better than the human eye when it comes to spotting authentic identity documents. This will lead to online and mobile technology becoming as good, if not better, than humans at verifying a person’s identity, bringing fraud losses down 15% in the mobile channel next year, based on the study.

The implication is that improvements in mobile technologies to verify customer identifications in mobile will enable companies to double the amount of approved customers through the mobile channel by decreasing their pending queue.

The net result is forecast to be a 50% increase of real applications being approved for accounts.

Biometrics may also provide a boost to mobile payments, as long as the identification becomes quick and easy during the payment process. Not just because the technology works well, but because consumer behavior may be changed in other areas, such as in banking or opening accounts.