Biometric verification is the process of confirming that a person is who they claim to be by comparing a physical or behavioural trait, such as a face, fingerprint, iris or voice, with a reference sample. It is a one-to-one comparison: the system checks one person against one stored record or document. The same technology used to grant access each time a customer logs in or approves a payment is explained in full in the Biometric Authentication entry.
In financial services the term is often used for remote onboarding. A new customer photographs an identity document and then takes a selfie or short video, and software checks that the face matches the photo on the document as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) and wider identity verification. A liveness check tries to make sure a real person is present rather than a printed photo, mask or deepfake.
Verification differs from identification, in which a system searches a whole database to find who someone is. Because face and fingerprint templates cannot be changed if stolen, many laws treat biometric data as a specially protected category.